The Tower
by DannoCH
Summary: Non-DH compliant, starts at end of HBP. Draco failed to kill Dumbledore and had to face punishment, which he unfortunately survived. Hermione's parents were not so lucky. Each is broken. Each has something that the other needs in order to be repaired.
1. In Which Punishment is Doled

**A/N: **I don't own the Harry Potter universe. I don't own any universe at all.

Thanks to likeabear, a great writer on top of being my beloved cousin, for betaing for me.

* * *

Chapter 1: In Which Punishment is Doled:

Draco Malfoy stood at the top of the Astronomy Tower, staring at one of the most powerful wizards of his time. He had spent months of fear, hardship, and desperation preparing for this one moment, and he was certain that he was finally ready to exterminate the wizened old coot. Try as he might, however, he couldn't seem to force his wand arm to move an inch in Dumbledore's direction, and he couldn't quite recall the words that he had to say.

Dumbledore simply met his gaze with a pitying expression. It was infuriating! If he could just move his wand and say the incantation, truly meaning it, everything would turn out as planned. And if he was sure of anything, it was that he meant it. The old man was not only insane, but was also only prolonging the inevitable end to the struggle at hand: Voldemort's victory. As Draco saw it, he was really doing the wizarding world a favor; the bloody process of war would be expedited by Dumbledore's death.

As for his own benefit, Draco knew that he would finally prove himself to the Dark Lord by his actions tonight. He would be allowed to return to his ancestral home and take his rightful place beside his father.

_Father_. A jolt of fear shot through him that made his breath catch. As he stared into the deep blue eyes that remained so bright, even in the face of death, he wondered what his father would do to him if his wand arm didn't unfreeze sometime soon. He imagined Lucius' face, contorted in rage, begging Voldemort for the opportunity to torture his own son. He saw Lucius, in the practiced and controlled manner of one accustomed to such things, beating the fruit of his own flesh until the floor became stained red with his own pure blood.

Draco would writhe before it was over, voice hoarse from issuing bloodcurdling screams that were punctuated only by the need to draw breath, and his father would stare coldly down at him with a look of satisfaction on his face.

_The screaming,_ Draco thought, _Gods, the screaming…._ And he realized that, should he fail, he would never have to hear that awful wailing emanating from his parents' dungeon again. For he could not hope to survive the night with his own life if he failed to extinguish Dumbledore's.

Gods, he was going to wet himself… and he only had a few moments before his aunt and other Death Eaters of the more sordid variety arrived, drawn by pure bloodlust and the promise that they would witness the Light's only hope fall, crumpled and lifeless, to the ground.

As Draco stood at the top of the tower, wind whipping through his robes and his face—ever the traitor—betraying his anguish, he never even noticed the arrival of Severus Snape. Draco remained frozen, gaze locked with his headmaster's, as the moments stretched on. He saw the old twinkle in Dumbledore's eye and knew that the bastard was rejoicing in his failure. Draco desperately tried to seize the moment of pure rage that followed, his wand shaking with the effort. If Dumbledore could find cause for _fucking_ _twinkle_ at Draco's imminent death, surely Draco could muster up two simple words and truly intend murder when he uttered them.

It became clear, however, that he could not. The moment passed and the rage dampened to a dull throbbing, leaving behind only wild fear and a tiny spark of regret for every moment in his life that had led him to this one. He was to kill or be killed, and the truly unjust reality was that somehow, the same moments that had led him here had never made him capable of murder.

Numbly, Draco registered Snape's presence and knew that his life was over. A Death Eater had seen his cowardice and would attest to his inability to carry out the only mission the Dark Lord would ever give him. Turning back to Dumbledore, he saw that the old man's gaze had fallen upon the potions master as well. Dumbledore's face became pleading.

"Severus, please…" he implored.

He appeared to be begging with his entire countenance for a man who was actually capable of committing murder to spare his wrinkled life. Draco pitied his own weakness, then, for he had never seen that particular expression on his headmaster's face before; Dumbledore must have known all along that the young Slytherin prince would fail.

Draco needed to look away from the evidence of his cowardice, so he turned to Snape. He found himself unable, try as he might, to tear his eyes from the potions master's face. As he watched, Severus stood quite still, chest expanding with the breath that would end Dumbledore's life, and a single tear trickling down his cheek.

"Avada Kedavra," Draco watched him say, and Dumbledore's body fell to the ground with a thump. Draco did not spare a glance for the fallen headmaster. Instead he watched, transfixed, as the single tear fled Snape's jawline to seep into the tower's stone floor.

* * *

Snape dragged Draco to the edge of Hogwarts' grounds, never speaking a word, and apparated them both to Malfoy Manor. Draco landed on his knees with his face in his hands, knowing that he was about to die but not wanting to witness the disappointment and rage in his father's face at his impotence.

He felt Severus pull him up by the elbow and drag him from the apparation foyer to the dining hall, where Voldemort held court and where his parents were undoubtedly waiting for him among the other Death Eaters. He daren't even look at Snape's face, for his former teacher must soon reveal what had happened that night, and the prospect was terrifying. He heard the loud crack of apparition and dully registered that his aunt Bella and company were also returning.

"SNAPE killed DUMBLEDORE! SNAPE killed DUMBLEDORE!" Bellatrix sang, and Draco heard rather than saw her dancing through the corridors toward their destination.

_Shit. FUCK! THIS IS IT! _ Apparently, there would be no question and answer period to prolong his life. His eyes darted around the room, still around floor level, until they stopped at a pair of shiny black dragon-hide shoes standing directly in front of him. His whole body was shaking, sweat dripping from his face, as he looked up into the eyes of death itself.

"Draccooo" Voldemort said, almost at a whisper, "you have failed me…"

Draco decided at that moment to at least show his father that he could die with dignity. He willed his shaking body to still and his eyes to show no fear as he awaited sentencing, never breaking eye contact with his master. Distantly, he could hear his aunt Bella still humming the tune of "Snape killed Dumbledore" to herself, cackling intermittently.

"Luciussss…"

Draco awaited his father's reply, not daring to break eye contact with the Dark Lord. "Yes, m-my lord?" His father sounded… frightened. Voldemort was known for sparing no family member in the punishment for one's bad deed.

"Luciusss, do you remember my instructions for Draco's punishment, should he fail?"

"My lord, do you mean for –"

"ANSWER ME, LUCIUSS! Do you remember? What did I say wasss to be done with him?"

"He was to be tortured, my lord, and k-killed."

Draco's heart plummeted and all the despair he had left to feel hit him head-on. This was it. His own father had confirmed that Draco Malfoy's life was about to end, and he had the depressing thought that he would never get the opportunity to do anything useful with it. He was actually about to die because he had failed to finally take action.

_Ironic_, he thought, though it was hard to know the true meaning of "irony" these days, and he wasn't sure if he'd gotten it right.

"As promised, then, dear Luciusss, you will be the one to do it. I know how much you will enjoy ridding yourself of your failure of an heir…. but pleassse, don't take all night. I expect you to be available to me by dawn."

"Yes, my lord."

Was that relief he heard in his father's tone? Draco wasn't quite so sure that the Dark Lord would absolve Lucius from his own punishment for the night.

"Oh, and one more request, Luciusss..."

Draco's heart skipped a beat from its place on the floor. The Dark Lord had some rather inventive forms of torture that he liked performed on his victims, forms he had been known to "request."

"Take him to the dungeonssss. We have guests."

* * *

The Malfoy men descended the dungeon stairs silently, the latter walking, wand at his back, in front of the former.

"_Muffliato_," Lucius whispered hoarsely.

Draco had made it to the center of the cavernous room and halted his steps. He did not turn to face his father.

"Draco…"

Still, Draco kept his back to the man who had begged the chance to be his executioner. He did not trust himself to communicate at all, resolving to face the end of his life as the strong, adult man he might have someday grown into. They stood there silently for a few moments, Draco concentrating on breathing and reminding himself that at least he'd be wishing for death by the time his father was forced, by the dawn, to give it to him.

_And my last experience in this world will be my father, grudgingly granting me my dying wish_, he mused. _Perfectly fucking typical._

"_Crucio!_"

Draco knew no more for several hours, though later he would remember screaming to rival any he had ever heard in his life. He would remember reneging on the promise to himself that he would face death with dignity. He would remember pleading with Lucius to stop, to take pity on him, Lucius' own son, and end his miserable life just a few hours early. He would remember watching intently as his own hot tears were absorbed by the dungeon's stone floor.

_Poetic justice,_ he had thought to himself. He had stopped making sense hours before.

* * *

After some time, Lucius muttered a spell that Draco did not recognize.

"_Exacto ocularis_," Lucius said, and such great pain exploded in Draco's head that he was blinded, and he thought it would never end.

Grabbing his head roughly, Lucius poured something incredibly foul down his son's throat.

C_oward,_ Draco thought, _poisoning me instead of facing and cursing me as I failed with Dumbledore. Fucking… poetic injustice_. It made him bloody mad to die by poison after all that. _Fucking waste_. What was wasted, he wasn't sure, but being angry about it comforted him.

Then, everything went dark.


	2. In Which Grief is Indulged

**A/N:** Once, I thought that Draco Malfoy might belong to me. Sadly, I woke up.

I'm adding chapters 1 & 2 in rapid succession because they sort of introduce my characters and their present emotional states, and they're both shorter and full of less action than my later chapters will hopefully be.

Just as a side note: I do not claim compliance to anything that was actually happening in the HP series during the time period in which this fic takes place. I'm not a compliant person. I do not comply.

There I said it.

* * *

Chapter 2: In Which Grief is Indulged

_Everything was on fire. As she watched, her parents' home burned until nothing but ashes remained. She tried to run, look away, scream… but she was unable to move. She knew that they were stuck inside and she could hear them screaming for their lives, but she could only watch with tears running down her face as their screams became more desperate and eventually stopped altogether. _

_She knew they were dead and that it was her fault, but she had no time to consider her guilt or even fully appreciate the loss of her parents. The fire was spreading, and she knew where it was headed. Her feet were still stuck no matter how she tried to move them. Looking around in desperation, for now she could move her head, she registered the approach of Harry and Ron, who would surely be able to save her. They were looking for her, and she tried to call out to them but she still couldn't make a sound. The fire kept approaching, and just as they saw her and started to run to her, she knew it would be too late, for the grass at her feet had gone up in flames._

_Her feet started to burn first, and it was agonizing. Her parents were dead, she was burning alive, and her best friends who could not save her would have to watch her perish. Finally, she felt her throat open up; she took a deep breath and shrieked with all her might…_

* * *

"HERMIONE!"

Someone was shaking her. Hermione Granger opened her eyes a bit too wide and had to shield them from the mid-morning light that filtered in through the windows of her room at the Burrow.

"Ughhhh…" she groaned.

She was drenched in sweat and her cheeks were still wet with tears recently shed. Feeling a brief moment of panic, she took a deep breath and reminded herself of where she was. She could almost still feel her feet burning, flames licking at her calves, but there was no fire here in her bed, and not even a scar marred the flesh of her lower extremities. She had gotten to Healers quickly enough that all of the damage to her body was reversible. Her heart, however, was beyond repair. It was torn apart again every night, and every morning she awoke to find it bleeding.

"Hermione, wake up. Please… Hermione… You were crying again."

Small hands were wiping her wild hair, which was wet with tears, away from her face. Thanking the Gods for the small miracle that was Ginny Weasley, Hermione did her best to shake the nightmares from her mind so that she could properly address her friend.

"Do you want to talk about it?" asked Ginny softly, reaching to grasp one of Hermione's hands gently in one of her own.

Hermione knew that her friend was honestly concerned for her well being, but her answer was still the same as it had been weeks prior. She knew that if she talked about her parents she'd start crying again, and she felt as if she had no more tears to spare.

"No," replied Hermione, not making eye contact with the youngest Weasley. "How about you go downstairs and get breakfast? I bet the boys are up. I'll meet you down there."

After a few seconds and with apparent reluctance, Ginny relinquished Hermione's hand, which was still clammy from sweating in the fire of her nightmares. Hermione looked up at Ginny's face and registered its sad expression before Ginny rose to let herself out of the bedroom, shutting the door behind her.

Hermione made her way to the bathroom to assess the damage. It would not do to look completely inconsolable and on the verge of tears over breakfast. That would ruin the whole "calm and collected" façade she had worked so hard to build. So she turned to the mirror and mentally gave herself a morning pep talk, brushing her teeth while she stared at her own reflection imperiously.

_Pull yourself together! They do not have the time to deal with your heartache. The world cannot afford their distraction. The lives of innocent people are at risk… _more_ innocent people. Don't be selfish. Your parents are already dead, they are beyond saving, and other people have a chance if you could just accept that. You've got this. Deep breaths. In… Out… Repeat._

She had to just keep breathing to get through the day. Eating would inevitably follow. If she could just inspire, her parents' deaths would have meaning.

She planned to use the remainder of her life to work tirelessly for the light, but as she saw the dark circles under her eyes and her tight, strained expression in the mirror, she had to acknowledge that the stress might be starting to negatively affect her health. She knew that while she may have been considered determined before, she was now venturing into the confines of obsessive. She couldn't care less, for her research into horcruxes soothed her; it was all consuming, leaving no time during the day for stray thoughts.

_That must be why my nights are so awful,_ she thought sourly, casting a glamour on herself to stave off her friends. With one more inspection, she deigned herself presentable and prepared to face a cheerful breakfast at the Weasley's.

* * *

It wasn't long into her stay at the Burrow before Hermione found that bubble baths were the only thing she could truly count on anymore. They had a charming consistency about them; there would be water of a specified heat, bath salts that always smelled the same, and solitude. People couldn't just barge in on you when you were lying naked in the bathroom, so they were forced to give you alone time. Hermione found that she could run a bath and hide away for as long as she wanted, and it was the only place in the Weasley home where she was sure to avoid cheery but concerned inquiries about her emotional health.

Sometimes she stayed in there for five consecutive hours. Those times, she surrounded herself with stacks of books and ensured her peace by charming the door to remain locked and soundproofed.

_Constant vigilance_, she would think wryly to herself. She was fairly certain that she was missing the mark on Moody's mantra but she found it fitting all the same.

On this particular day, Hermione had been commandeering the Weasley second floor bathroom for two hours with no plans of surrendering it in the near future. She had gotten through an entire text about Dark Magic and hadn't noticed anything that even suggested the existence of horcruxes, but she intended to read through it again; the wording could be quite tricky in dark texts, as if vagueness could possibly save the authors from persecution. Her search for horcrux knowledge was becoming more frustrating by the day. For the first time in her life, books were failing her.

Then again, she may have to let the books off the hook in this case, as she hadn't exactly been able to focus on the reading according to her usual standards.

She was distracted. She needed to think through some things.

_Not "some things." Ron. I have to decide what to do about Ron._

She sighed and picked up her wand to nudge the water temperature up a couple of degrees. She was really quite tense.

* * *

"But… 'Mione, I don't understand."

Ron Weasley was sitting next to her on a patch of grass during a fairly sunny summer day, not that she had noticed the weather. She was too busy taking in his expression. His brow was furrowed in confusion, and in his eyes she saw pure, unadulterated pain. She resolutely tried to ignore the glassy sheen they had begun to take on.

"I'm so sorry. I just can't be your girlfriend; I can't hold your hand; I can't _like_ you. Not the way I did, anyway."

"Why not? What changed?"

_Everything_, she thought, but she knew that wasn't a good answer. Though it felt true, it sounded overdramatic and silly in her mind.

"I changed, Ron, and I'm sorry. This thing with my parents…" She trailed off just long enough for him to chime in.

"But I've been trying to help you! You won't talk to me! You won't talk to anyone!"

"I watched them die for me. I can't stop thinking about it, and nothing makes me feel better. You hold my hand in comfort, and it just makes me sadder. Don't you understand? I can't have… that… right now. It's too complicated. I need for us to just be friends." She was feeling desperate to get away from him, but the words just kept pouring from her mouth like water from a broken dam. This conversation had to end as soon as possible.

"Look, I'm going to go to my room. We can talk more later if you want. I'm…" She swallowed. Now _her_ eyes were starting to fill with tears, which was exactly what she was trying to prevent. "I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings. I have to go."

" 'Mione," Ron said as she turned her back to him, "please..."

Leaving his entreaty hanging in the air between them, he walked after her and took her by the arm, turning her toward him. After taking a moment to study her thoughtfully, he grabbed her other arm with his remaining hand and held onto her tightly as he leaned his face closer to hers.

She was so taken by surprise that she didn't even know what was happening.

She felt herself inhale sharply as his lips pressed onto her own, but she never broke eye contact with him as he continued to stare at her face intently, waiting for her response.

_Oh God, why is this happening to me?_ Was all she could think, and it was a terrible thought to be plagued with the moment that she shared a first kiss with someone. She felt as if that kiss would necessarily taint their relationship forever.

Nevertheless, he was so warm and comfortable that she felt most of her carefully constructed fortress come crashing down. Her eyes stung once again with the promise of tears and she felt a flush rise to her face.

She broke away from him - arms and lips all at once - and turned back toward the Burrow, unable to see his dejected expression through her tear-blurred vision. She ran as quickly as possible back into the house and immediately to her bathtub, stumbling and falling repeatedly on the way.

Vaguely, her brain picked up the sound Ron calling after her but she had no difficulty ignoring it; her mind was completely focused on attaining the one solace left to her.

She felt sick.

* * *

A few days later, Hermione woke to the familiar nightmare. It was getting worse. Her subconscious kept tempting her with conjured images of people running to her aid, promising rescue, but always too late. She preferred the reality of that night: she had been completely alone.

Exhausted, she decided to get some coffee and some breakfast before her morning shower, failing to even glance in the mirror on her way out.

During the short walk between the staircase and the kitchen table, Hermione watched as Ron ate six entire strips of bacon while listening to something Ginny was saying. They were talking in hushed tones and fell silent as she approached the table, Harry suddenly finding his porridge in need of his full attention and Ginny apparently supervising as he stirred.

Ron was the only one of the three without enough tact to look away from the person they had just been caught discussing. Either that, or he didn't care for tact.

"Hermione, you look like hell this morning. Everything ok?" he asked.

This game was getting old.

"I was just up late. I got very involved in _The Tales of Beedle the Bard_, and I still can't seem to make sense of it. I mean, I know Dumbledore must have had a plan in leaving it to me, but I've read it three times now and I have no clue what I'm supposed to ascertain."

Ron just looked at her concernedly. He clearly saw through her lie but it was easier for her to maintain her ruse than it was to address the truth. He reached over to take one of her hands, obviously preparing to say something that he thought was serious, but she moved it away before he could grasp it.

He left his lone hand on the table so that it sat awkwardly where hers used to be.

"You know, Hermione, you have to sleep. And eat. You have not done very much of either recently. There are more things to life than studying…"

During his short speech, Hermione became increasingly agitated. First there was the kiss, a subject that they each had somehow independently decided to pretend had never happened, and now this ridiculous insinuation that her life was empty and meaningless? How dare he? Her family was _dead_, and she was to blame. How could she possibly think of anything but fighting for them? She stood up from her chair and looked down at him, anger and frustration clearly radiating from her.

"Horcruxes, Ronald. Have you heard of them?"

He took advantage of her brief pause to mutter an eloquent, "Err..."

She continued on as if the lapse had never occurred.

"We have to find all of them, yet we have no idea where to start. People are _dying,_" she said, becoming hysterical, her shaking hands balling into tight fists, "So NO, there is NOT more to life than studying. My studies have everything to do with life."

With that, she fled the kitchen, breakfast untouched, and climbed the staircase to her room. As quickly as possible, she shut her bedroom door behind her and practically fell onto her bed, breath coming in choking gasps as she began to sob uncontrollably.

This was going to be a bad day.


	3. A Child is Just a Small, Weird Person

**A/N: **Thanks for JKR for Harry, MThisbe for inspiration for my title, and LikeABear for beta'ing (and a little hand-holding...).

Any thoughts? Just want to say, "hey" or "OMG DM IS SO SEXY"? Leave a review! It just takes a second. And believe me, I'm with you on the whole sexy thing.

Uhm, also, bear with me: This chapter and the next are the only ones left before we get to Hogwarts and our main characters will start interacting more (not that they'll be too happy about it at first heheee). I think the events in this chapter are vital to Draco's character development. Something has to happen to make him start to reconsider his world-view.

* * *

Chapter 3: A Child is Just a Small, Weird Person

Draco didn't know it, but he was having a bad day. In fact, he had experienced an unfortunate string of bad days recently, and if he had been aware, he would have known that his life hung in the balance.

As it was, he had no reason to believe that he still had a life to hang. The scenes that played out for his unconscious mind seemed like those rumored instances where your soul straddles the line between life and death. They always say that your past will come back to haunt you someday, and his certainly was; over and over, warped versions of his life's actions replayed before him. He belittled Crabbe and Goyle over a game of chess in the Slytherin common room. He received a rare genuine smile of approval from his father as he took the Dark Mark. He watched Dumbledore pity him for his ineptitude and eventually fall off an invisible cliff, eyes blank. Severus Snape turned his head away as one lonely tear dripped to the floor in a scene that replayed on an endless loop, salty tears gathering in a deep pool that rose until Draco was drowning in them. Hermione Granger, of all people, glared at him, wound up her right arm, and slapped him across the face, digging her nails in so that she scratched at his eyes. The blood dripping from them felt oddly akin to weeping.

He thought that he must be dead, and watching his past interactions with people he hated and resented would be his eternal torture. Clearly, judgment day had come and he had once again failed.

* * *

He heard muffled voices emanating from everywhere at once. When he tried to respond, he learned that his voice, predictably, was nowhere to be found… in fact, he couldn't move at all.

_Fucking hell, _he thought, frustrated by his mounting confusion over where he was, why he was there, and whether he was actually alive at all. The best he could work out was that he was unable to even blink, a realization that passed quietly through the fogginess of his brain.

Trying to muster all the clarity he could, he attempted making a contingency plan for the worst-case scenario. If he actually lived through this, which he hoped was doubtful, where could he possibly go? By his estimation, he had officially secured his position as one of the most hated men in wizarding Britain; all sides of the mounting global conflict probably wanted him dead by now, and some might even enjoy torturing him first. Yes, he was convinced that living was the worst thing that could possibly happen.

Perhaps if he were to just lie there focusing solely on stilling his breathing, he would suffocate…

_Breathing? I'm breathing now? Damn!_

He exhaled as much as possible and willed his diaphragm to remain relaxed. He felt his cognitive abilities begin to slip and his subconscious put up a disturbingly feeble fight – even his baser instincts somehow knew that death was preferable. Floating in this state, he registered dimly that someone had entered his room and started dabbing at his eyes with a warm cloth. Some undefined tension within him lifted, and he felt himself gasp for breath as his instinct to live finally took over and delivered the final punch.

_Damn._

_

* * *

_

"Please don't cry, Ella. You don't want to disturb your roommate, do you?"

_Ahh yes, so I've moved on to hallucinations of people I don't even know. At least I might not have to keep looking at Granger's angry face._ He heard a little sniffle.

"No…" _sniff_. "I just… It hurts."

"Ok, we'll get you something for that. Can you show me where it's hurting?" The woman's response was kind and motherly with what sounded like a Spanish lilt. After a short pause, he heard that same voice speak again.

"Alright, I'll be right back with some medicine for you. Maybe we'll get a good flavour this time, hmm? And mind you, no more crying," she said, after which she whispered her final admonition, "you wouldn't want to wake Odin."

Draco accepted that the exchange he'd heard was not a product of his own potion-addled mind and added "whiny little girl" to a growing list of reasons he wished he could just die already. He could only hope that this Odin character wouldn't be too hateful, but he wasn't counting on it. Any person named after a Norse god was bound to be kind of a douche.

* * *

A little finger was poking him softly in the upper arm. He groaned internally; maybe if he ignored it, it would go away. Little breaths warmed his bicep and made the fine hairs on his arm stand on end. Why couldn't he have just a few weeks of peace?

"Odin…" she whispered. "Are you awake? It's time for breakfast…"

_So _I'm_ the Norse god? Ok, I suppose I could go with that. Better than Draco bloody Malfoy._

If she kept poking him, he wouldn't be able to answer for his actions.

"Go away," he said, his voice sounding odd after so many days of silence.

"I KNEW you were awake!" she said excitedly. He wished he could just bodily eject her from his room, but that would require moving.

"Leave me alone," was his only reply. He felt her vacate his personal area and heard the sound of a small form settling into a nearby bed.

He expected her to be duly offended after his harsh words– she was just a little girl, after all – but after a few minutes, he heard her contentedly humming a tune that had absolutely no melody and was terribly off key. What could he possibly have done to deserve this? Once again, be prayed for death, which he could only hope would be a process devoid of humming.

* * *

If Draco had thought he'd hit the bottom of his pit of despair, he'd been wrong. _This_ was the bottom. He lay in his bed, which evidently was in some Spanish hospital. Healer Torres had explained as much when she'd found he was well enough to speak, though she had been unable to say who was responsible for his stay there.

His bandages had been removed to reveal half-healed skin covering his entire abdomen and, when his head was unwrapped, he had finally taken the opportunity to inspect his broken body. He would likely bear the deformities that covered his torso forever, but that wasn't the worst of it. It wasn't the worst by half.

He stared tragically at the stark white ceiling above his bed for what may have been hours. He wanted to let his mind drift away from this place and away from himself. He tried to think of the stereotypical scenes people were supposed to picture in times like these: beach tides coming in and out, snow falling so thickly upon frozen lakes that only a short white distance exists in all directions, lounging on a chaise couch, wine in hand, while a quartet plays the overture from _Madame Butterfly_… he even tried, albeit briefly, to think of sex. The realization that no one could ever want him now occurred to him almost immediately, and he bitterly concluded that sex was a pastime that his teenaged mind would have to give up forever. It was certain to put up an arduous and painful fight.

He vaguely registered that his petite roommate sat a few feet away from him for the whole of his brooding, being quiet for once. After a few hours of silence, he heard her approach his bed shyly and, before he could say anything, she reached out to touch his hand. Where she had learned her manners, he had no idea, but he wasn't planning on allowing her to _touch_ him, of all things. She had interrupted a very important internal debate over running away to a monastery to take a vow of celibacy, ending his suffering once and for all.

He pulled his hand away from her as if it were a hot poker.

"Go. Away," he ordered her in a harsh staccato. He had no patience for children.

She dropped her hand but continued to stand and stare at him, and soon he heard her begin to cry. It was a sound that he was grudgingly learning to tolerate.

He tried to resist, be he couldn't help himself; his sense of sight had been barred from him for so very long. He wanted to look and see how he repulsed her, for it was sure to be written all over her face. Children were no good at hiding such things, and he might as well start getting used to the reactions that his deformed appearance was bound to arouse.

Keeping his expression carefully blank, he turned his one remaining eye, the right one, upon the person who spent her days apparently in pursuit of irritating him as much as possible.

He saw a little girl who could not be older than six or seven. Her green eyes had welled with tears and her nose had become quite red, but where he looked for fear and apprehension he saw only crestfallen sadness. Under his stoic gaze, her lower lip started to tremble more violently and she turned and ran out of the room, soft brown curls bouncing on the back of her neck as she made her escape.

After she had gone, he noticed a knot that had lodged itself firmly in his chest. It was small but resolute, and he feared the worst: He'd die of a heart attack in this dreadful place, and the last words he'd ever speak would be to a six-year-old girl who could very well go on to become a Hufflepuff.

* * *

More often than not, Draco would be awoken in the night by sad little sobs emanating from Ella's bed. He was having an increasingly hard time tolerating it, but apparently Healer Torres had more important things to do in the middle of the night than comforting a six-year-old, and when he approached her for a room change, she had curtly refused.

Exasperated, he'd demand to know why on earth he had been stuck with a little girl for a roommate, and she handed him some nonsense about overcrowding and how Ella was the only other patient in the hospital who spoke English.

_Great, so we can speak to each other. That's exactly what I want, _he'd thought, and the conversation had been over.

When he had finally had enough of the nightly crying routine to become irrationally desperate for it to end, he knew he had to take the situation into his own hands. He hated the idea of opening himself up for conversation, but he knew what he must do, and he had to get it over with.

"Ella," he started, hovering over her. She was curled up into a little ball and hugging a ratty stuffed animal while she cried.

She unfurled herself slightly and looked up at him, large innocent eyes taking on a glowing quality as they reflected the moonlight.

"Why are you crying?" he demanded. Identifying the problem was the first step in solving it.

"… Don't know…" She was hyperventilating and sniffling and she was covered in her own snot and saliva. In short, she was disgusting.

"Well, what do I have to do to get you to stop?" Draco asked. He realized that he was sort of yelling, and he did his best to control his frustration. She directed her eyes away from him and down to somewhere closer to her feet.

"Mommy used to… read… to me," she said between her little gasps.

"Well, where is she _now_?" He asked, but he cursed himself for being so utterly stupid a second after the question left his mouth. Certainly her mother couldn't be around, or he'd have seen her by now. Sure enough, in direct opposition to his goal, she began to sob with renewed vigor. He pinched the bridge of his nose and breathed deeply, waiting for her distress to abate.

When she had calmed herself enough to speak again, though she still hadn't ceased her blubbering, she said, "She and daddy… They're gone."

And the knot in his chest tightened the slightest bit.

The situation was getting out of control quickly. Draco needed to change gears to redirect her attention, as this was one subject that couldn't possibly end well.

"That's enough, Ella." She only sobbed harder. "Ok, err… would you be quiet if I told you a story?"

_Wow,_ he thought, _I must be going insane_.

"You're going to…" _sniff, _"read to me?" She looked up at him with her wide eyes and her dampened curls stuck disgustingly to her face.

"That is _not_ what I just said. I said I would tell you a story. Do you see any books around here?"

She shook her head, eyes a little fearful, without even looking around the room at all.

"Well, if you promise to be absolutely silent during and after and not interrupt in any conceivable way, I will get on with it. And for Merlin's sake, don't touch me with those filthy, snotty fingers."

She kept her mouth firmly shut, but apparently couldn't hold back a small smile as she sat up in her bed and folded hands in her lap, preparing to listen.

What on Earth was wrong with this little girl? She was smiling at him? He had done everything in his power to discourage her from liking him, yet now she seemed eager for his attention, not that she should be; He had no idea what to say next. His parents had avoided filling his head with nonsense as a child, so he knew none of the stock bedtime stories that people told their wizarding children. At a loss for fiction, he decided to go with reality. He started the story of his first year at Hogwarts, planning to leave out some of the scarier things and maybe bending the truth just a little here and there.

Ok, maybe it was slightly more than a little… but he knew he'd have her where he wanted her, quietly and obediently under his thumb, if she saw him as a hero. As he finished a detailed description of the Sorting, he knew his efforts had been worth it; her breathing became even and deep, producing a soft snore now and again. The little thing never could just keep quiet.

* * *

"Ode?" came a little voice from the foot of his bed.

"What did I tell you about calling me 'Ode'?" he said, refusing to even open his eye to the morning light. He had been _sleeping_, damnit. If he allowed himself to wake up, he might just strangle her by accident, and he'd hate her even more if he managed to kill _her_ when he had failed to commit that same act so miserably before.

"Ummm…"

He didn't feel like waiting until she came up with an answer that would exonerate her. Resistance was futile. This had been the last straw.

"Alright, Ella, I'll tell you what. For every time you call me 'Ode' I'm going to call you by an equally ridiculous and offensive nickname. Let's go with…. 'Stinky…' Stinky, I hate you. Go away."

She had the nerve to giggle. Gods, what sort of little girl was she, giggling at the idea of being called 'Stinky'?

"Umm…" she continued, "Can you tell me again about the dog with the three heads? And how you saved the stone from the bad man?" She really had a way of recounting his warped version of events that made him feel distinctly uncomfortable.

"What is _wrong_ with you? I hate you, remember? Go. Away. Bedtime stories are for _bedtime only_." He still hadn't accepted that he was awake yet, and he thought he could drift back to sleep if she would just be quiet.

"Uhh… ok…" She sounded slightly disappointed.

She got back into her own bed and he was just falling back into a comfortable semi-sleep when her little humming noises roused him like a splash of ice water to his face. He took a deep breath and lashed out without thinking.

"I'm seriously going to kill you, you know that? Get out of here!"

She ran from the room, clearly upset, but she returned later and expected her usual bedtime story as if her life had never been threatened. She smiled shyly and sat with her little hands folded in her lap, obviously appreciating the attention he reluctantly bestowed upon her.

_There really must be something bloody wrong with her, _was all he could conclude as he sat up in his bed and began his nightly recitation.

* * *

Draco's physical recovery was steady, if slow. He still battled with the muscle stiffness, tremors, and bouts of dizziness associated with being subjected to a _Cruciatus_ curse for a prolonged period. Thus, he was confined to bed for most of the time, with some warning as to the state of his organs if he "ripped something open internally," which was something he didn't really want to think about. He did get to go on languorous walks through the hospital, which afforded him his only respite from one entirely too annoying little girl with brown curly hair.

He relished those walks, preferring to take them especially when Ella was receiving her treatments. Frankly, the things they did to her were something he, as a privileged pureblood, should never have to witness. He found that he was sort of appalled by the procedure, which was a feeling he didn't want to consider because it would imply that he _cared_. A few times a week, Healers would attach her to a machine via little plastic tubes and siphon the blood out of her while she sat quietly, sniffling every so often. It was barbaric and so very _muggle_. He knew that there must be a better magical way to do whatever it was they were doing to her, but he couldn't waste much time worrying over it. It simply wasn't his problem.

To ensure his own ability to rest, he acquiesced to telling her Hogwarts stories almost every night. It was irritating, but hearing her sniffling and carrying on in bed was more irritating, so he did what he must. He otherwise was mostly able to avoid talking to her at all.

On nights after her treatments, he would consent to their new nightly ritual of storytelling as always, but sometimes she remained inconsolable. He would hear her crying very quietly to herself, seemingly to hide it from him, but doing a poor job of it. On those nights, he would lie awake and wait for her insufferable sniffling to stop, finally giving in to his own exhaustion once she fell quiet. Though he'd consistently deny it to himself in the morning, he battled with himself every night that she cried, wanting and yet not wanting to sit up in his bed, sternly tell her to calm down, and launch into a distorted retelling of the past.

He never did interrupt her, however, for he couldn't be certain of his true motive. It was somewhere between a need for peace and a need to ease the resident knot of tightness in his chest that would not loosen regardless of how he willed it to. Not wanting to think about it or how it had gotten there, he ignored the knot and Ella alike on the nights it was most pronounced.

As the weeks passed, Draco adjusted to having a little girl as his only companion. When he would allow himself to think about it, it was to his dismay that he realized how much his dictating to her had turned into actual conversations… as much as one could have a conversation with any lesser mammal like, say, a cat. But then again, people had conversations with cats all the time, and that didn't mean accepting the cats as equals. Yes, those people were a little insane, but he had to admit that he was going a little insane. He was, after all, stuck in a foreign country, waiting for the wizards of Britain to hunt him down and kill him once and for all, with only a little girl for company. He figured he'd have to accept a little insanity.

* * *

"… Ode?"

"… Stinky?"

"What happened to your eye?" She asked, a little shy. Her short life had apparently not served to teach her about what kinds of questions were and were not appropriate to ask strangers.

"Gods, Ella, did anyone ever teach you that it is very rude to ask those sorts of questions?"

She became embarrassed and reticent. "… no," she quietly replied.

As much as he'd like to refuse to answer her, for she truly had been quite impolite, he had learned that it was easier to just give her an answer in situations like these. The sooner she ended up asleep, the less time he had to spend talking to her. Quickly, he prepared an answer that would align with his intentions and prepared to deliver it, but not before he sighed dramatically to remind her of how onerous she was.

"Remember when I told you about the very bad man? The Dark Lord?" He excused himself for referring to Voldemort as a "very bad man." The man had ordered his execution, after all, and he knew that Ella responded better to a lighter version of things. He didn't expect her to grasp the complex and sophisticated position of those on the dark side, for she couldn't possibly be the heiress of a pureblood fortune, living out her young weeks all alone in some shabby hospital in the middle of Spain. The hero worship he got from putting himself in Potter's position was just an added bonus.

She nodded, her green eyes growing wide. This was becoming so easy.

"I was working as a spy, pretending to be on his side, and he ordered me to kill Dumbledore."

She gasped. Dumbledore was getting to be one of her favourite characters, much to his displeasure.

"But you didn't, right Ode? You didn't kill him?"

"No, I didn't kill him. Don't be ridiculous," _I was far too cowardly for that…_ "But the Dark Lord was very angry when I failed to do his bidding, so he ordered one of his Death Eaters…" He paused and gulped as he recalled that night, when his father had turned a murderous expression on him and taken him down to the dungeons to beat the life out of him. He couldn't seem to recall this particular beating with the stoicism he felt at all the other countless thrashings of his past, though he wished he could.

"Ah, he ordered one of them to kill me."

She covered her mouth with her hands and looked up at him in fear.

"What happened next?" She asked. It was almost as if she cared about what had happened to him, though he knew that could never be true. He ensured it himself.

"The Death Eater tortured me in the dungeons. One of the Curses he used on me took out my eye, and the Healers were unable to fix it," he said simply.

He gestured toward his empty left socket, magically kept covered by a black eye patch. He had seen what lay hidden behind that triangle of fabric… a wave of nausea washed over him as he recalled the image. It was best for everyone if the patch remained where it was.

"Uhhh… curse?"

"Oh, I don't remember what it was. I doubt I've ever heard of it before."

She continued to look confused.

"You _do_ know what a Curse is, don't you?"

She straightened her back and grew indignant. "Yeah…" she responded. "So how did you get away from the bad man?"

"That's enough questions, Ella," he responded angrily, for he didn't know the answer, "You should go to sleep now."

* * *

"Ella, don't you want some of the oatmeal? I think it'll make you feel better."

Healer Torres had been begging her to eat for the past ten minutes, to no avail. Ella kept her mouth firmly shut as she lay in her bed, uncharacteristically unwilling to get up and start running around demanding that he rise and eat breakfast with her the moment she woke up.

Draco couldn't take their friendly warfare any longer. He was pulling out the heavy artillery.

"Ella," he started, and she turned her gaze toward him in response.

He paused for a moment, taken aback when he saw her face. Her normally pearly white sclerae had taken on a faint yellow tinge and her rosy, vital skin had become pale and sallow.

He mentally shook himself, furrowed his brow, and steadfastly continued, determined to end this food conflict as soon as possible. He was bloody tired of it.

"Ella, eat the gods-foresaken oatmeal or I won't say a word to you until tomorrow. You know what that means..."

Still, she refused, not even fighting him on his punishment, though her eyes were wide and sad when she locked them with his and shook her head in dissent. Healer Torres left the room directly and returned promptly with the atrocious blood-filtering machine, and Ella's yellowed eyes filled with saltwater as she sat quietly, resigned to her fate.

His chest tightened painfully, the pressure making it hard to breathe. He stood from his bed, saying not a word to either Healer or patient, and left the room. It was as good a time as any for a walk.

* * *

That night, as it neared her bedtime, Ella shuffled herself to the foot of his bed and opened her mouth to speak, her eyes on the floor.

"Ode, will you please tell me a bedtime story tonight?"

So she hadn't forgotten his threat from the morning. Though he didn't like the idea of empty threats, he knew that punishing her for being sick was a crueler thing than even he was capable of.

"Why wouldn't I? Now sit quietly and listen."

Somewhat predictably, after he wrapped up another chapter of his tale and instructed her to go to bed, he laid back onto his own stark white cot and heard the unmistakable sounds of her muted distress from across the room. She seemed to be crying into her pillow.

The all-too-familiar knot in his chest tightened inexorably as he laid there, staring at the ceiling and trying to ignore her. After some minutes it became so tight that he feared it might explode.

He had to escape. He resolved to take one of his slow turns about the hospital, his second that day, with the hope that the knot would ease and that she'd have exhausted herself by the time he got back.

As he walked the deserted and dark halls, he tried his best to avoid thinking of Ella at all. He was haunted by the expression on her face when he had told her to go to sleep that night, as if she was afraid for him to stop talking and turn out the light. She had clearly tried to dampen that fear with a brave front, but he saw through it. The girl was so typically bloody Gryffindor he could hardly stand it. Even so, he had vanquished the lights in the room and refused to say another word to her, turning himself toward his wall as she settled into her covers. And he had been right to ignore her. He had to establish boundaries.

After half an hour of dwelling on the very subject he'd tried to avoid, he returned to find that her side of the room had become blessedly quiet. He got into his own bed, congratulating himself on not cracking under the pressure of her anguish.

But he still couldn't sleep.

_What now? Gods, why have you forsaken me? _

It was absolutely silent. Too silent. No little girl breaths and snores, noises he had grown accustomed to in the past weeks, reached his ears at all.

In an irrational moment of panic, he threw his covers from himself and stalked to her bed. It was empty but for that disgusting stuffed animal that he had seen so many weeks before when he had first interrupted her crying. In Ella's place was a slip of paper on which a single word was written:

_Draco._

Suddenly, the knot in his thorax tightened rapidly and mightily, impinging on the ability of his heart to beat and his lungs to expand, until it imploded. It had reached the end of its life, and a vast emptiness remained where it had once resided, as a star dies through a terrible supernova to create a black hole. And like a black hole, the emptiness in his heart was rapidly drawing in all the emotions he had kept under careful control since the night at the astronomy tower, try as they might to escape its pull.

His broken body couldn't take it. He collapsed, unconscious, onto her bed.

* * *

**A/N: **Hope you liked it! Chapter 4 is currently in beta mode and should be forthcoming.


	4. The Inflection Before the Rise

**A/N: **I don't own the HP Universe.

Thanks to LikeABear for beta'ing! She just updated her wonderful story which is in the Twilight universe. It's full of drama, action, and intrigue! Link from my favourites!

Bonus points for anyone who can name the tv show that is referenced in the first bit. Ahhh what wonderful high school angst!

* * *

Chapter 4: The Inflection Before the Rise

Hermione took a deep breath and tried her best not to faint as her best friend prattled on.

"Really, Hermione, we're doing this for you. You're going crazy, and we think you need a break. You need some time to… err… move on. Burying your head in mountains of work all the time isn't helping you get better."

She really resented this. Harry, the spokesperson, sat waiting anxiously for the inevitable explosion.

But she had already been defeated. She knew that. She had awoken to find almost all of her books gone, including _Beedle the Bard_. All she had left were a few tomes that they had decided must be for entertainment only: A battered copy of Jane Austen's _Emma_, her old, faithful _Hogwarts: A History_, and a particularly long volume on the Goblin Wars. The last, she thought, they must have left her lest she get bored… there was no way they could imagine that she might get through such a bland text by the end of the summer. Well, she'd show them.

"Harry," She started, shooting a glare at Ron that included him despite his silence. He wouldn't be getting off so easily. "… I can't believe you're doing this to me! I'm not a child. I can take care of myself! And just WHAT do you expect to achieve without me?"

She was yelling, her breasts rising and falling with shallow gasps, and her forehead was strained and crinkled between her eyes. She was a few chest pains away from a full-on panic attack, and it wouldn't be her first.

"Hermione," piped in Ron, "don't you think you're being a little… irrational?"

He could be such an idiot.

"IRRATIONAL? Don't _you_ think I _know_ I'm being BLOODY IRRATIONAL? What am I supposed to do all day here, rotting away, with only the Goblin Wars to keep my mind off…"

She felt angry tears rolling down her cheeks. She had had enough of crying, she really had. It was exhausting, and it left her feeling dehydrated and headachy. And she could kill them both for bringing it on her again.

She was rubbing at her closed eyes, her back hunched and defeated, when she felt the strength of her two boys surround her. For the first time since she had come to live with them that summer, for the first time since her parents had died, she allowed someone to comfort her while she broke down and cried herself out.

Their arms were sturdier than she'd remembered. She felt one strong, tentative hand stroke her hair and another rub circles on her upper back. It must have appeared awkward, this three-way hug that lasted longer than she could track, but she didn't care. She felt safe, and it had been so long since she had let someone hold her like this. It was her mother's job, and her mother was dead.

But she was still alive.

When her sobbing had abated, Harry and Ron let go of her and Ron took a red-checkered handkerchief out of his pocket and held it out to her. She didn't understand the patterns on handkerchiefs; they were always so cheerful, but there could never be anything cheerful about their use. She accepted it as Harry spoke again for the first time.

"You okay now?"

She nodded, sniffing and wiping at the corners of her eyes with her new red and white square of fabric.

"I feel gross," she said, and laughed awkwardly at herself.

They exchanged a look.

"Right," said Ron with a nod. Without a word, he grabbed her hand and took her upstairs to her bathroom, and she allowed herself to be led quietly the whole way. It reminded her of being six. She liked six. Six was simple.

Apparently, though he seemed woefully oblivious to her feelings ninety-five percent of the time, he had caught on to her love of long, hot baths. He left the bathroom door behind him ajar and turned the faucet marked "hot" until it was fully open. Magically steaming water poured immediately from its orifice. Long gone were the days in her life when she'd have to stand, naked, with her hand in the spray of a shower or the stream of a faucet, waiting for it to become habitable. For that she was eternally grateful.

"_Accio Emma_," he said, pulling out his wand, and one of her most beloved possessions landed in his outstretched palm. Wordlessly, he handed it to her and turned to examine her face more closely. Peripherally, she saw him raise his right hand toward her cheek, her heart beating in alarm but none of her other muscles responding to the adrenaline surge that his closeness inspired. She was stuck exactly between fight and flight in her own personal category of danger response: freeze. It was all she ever did, and it never got her anywhere.

_Not again_, she thought in the split second she had before he took action.

But he just wiped one wayward tear from her face, looked at her regretfully, and walked from the room, closing the door behind him.

She sighed to herself and stuffed Ron's handkerchief into a back pocket of her jeans before shedding them in preparation for her bath.

* * *

"Why don't you come out with us today and learn to fly?"

She just laughed derisively in response.

"Hermione, come on. You have to do something with yourself all day other than watching that… err… television thing."

No matter how many times he saw it, Ron never really grew accustomed to the television in her room at the Burrow that she had rigged to work on magic.

"I would, Ron, really, but my day is kind of full," she said, gesturing toward the DVD's that were sitting on her nightstand. She had yet to look away from the episode of the American high school drama that was currently playing on the screen.

"… and you'd rather be watching that Jordan dude continually break Angela's heart than spend just one afternoon with us?" interjected Harry, mock hurt in his tone. He understood good television better than Ron ever would.

"Actually, I'm rooting for Brian Krakow."

"You would," countered Harry.

"Whatever," she said, rolling her eyes. "I'll see you at dinner."

"Right, maybe you'll actually eat something tonight?" asked Ron.

Now this was really unfair; she ate _something_ every night.

"Maybe it would stimulate my appetite if I had something useful to do with my time?" she countered.

"You could always write a paper on the Goblin Wars. I'm sure we could get Percy to grade it," said Ron. Was it just her, or had he become cleverer?

"Okay, that's it, leave me alone," she ordered, shooing them out of her room. Relief washed over her as she shut her door firmly after their retreating figures, and she could wipe the affected playful smile off of her face.

It was a small consolation that it had been almost a week since she had cried, and as many days since she had woken from a fiery nightmare. That fact didn't mitigate the distance that seemed to loom between her and her best friends, however. That distance remained no matter how many tentative steps she tried to take toward them, as if her body moved forward but her heart remained, frozen, where it had been the day that they'd held her as she cried.

* * *

A week before class started, Hermione received a letter that was cause for some private excitement. It arrived by a non-descript tawny barn owl, was written on non-descript parchment, and was tied with common package twine.

But the contents were exciting indeed.

She held the letter with barely controlled, shaking fingers as she read it over breakfast:

_Miss Hermione Granger,_

_ I'm writing to you on a matter of utmost urgency. I have a request of you that I feel assured you will agree to, though the task will not be easy and you may come to regret your decision to acquiesce to it. If you choose not to accept this responsibility, I trust that you will speak of it to absolutely no one, and reply to this message with only the word, "no." If you do accept, your silence will suffice. Correspondence in these times is risky at best. _

_ I have hidden a person in the abandoned North Tower at Hogwarts. I would like for you, and only you, to know of his presence and to aid him in his slow return to health. He should be considered a valuable source of information for your cause if you are successful at convincing him to talk. _

_ This situation requires a level of finesse and discretion that I'm sure I can trust you to exercise. Please stand by for further instruction, and, Miss Granger, _do_ hesitate to ask me for assistance. Owl me only when absolutely necessary. Hogwarts owl number 215 should be able to find me. _

The letter was unsigned, but was on paper with an official Order of the Phoenix watermark. As she concluded the last line, she felt shocked at the implications: How could she not have noticed that the Hogwarts owls were numbered? How terribly embarrassing!

But after her brief moment of indulgence in shaken intellectual pride, she allowed the panic to set in. There was a very real possibility that this letter could be a trap, designed to get her to the North Tower alone and... She didn't want to think about what came after "and."

But it couldn't be faked, right? The watermarked parchment was a way that the Order had devised to tell authentic correspondence from others; it had been charmed to be used by Order members only, tied to the blood oath they had all taken upon joining.

So it must be real.

And now she really had something important to do.

She smiled to herself, the first genuine expression of happiness she'd experienced in weeks.

Things were definitely looking up.

* * *

Draco stared up at the ceiling above his single hospital-issue bed.

It was just so _white_. It was irritating.

In fact, he was realizing that everything about this room was irritating: white walls, white ceiling, white sheets on the empty bed that sat a few feet away from his, and the complete silence that surrounded him.

That is, it surrounded him until Healer Torres entered the room, presumably to ask him yet another pointless string of questions about Ella's disappearance.

"Odin, do you mind if I ask you some more questions?"

He let her question hang in the air for a few seconds, as if he were pondering his answer. He continued to stare at the white ceiling.

"Whatever," he replied without inflection.

"Can you tell me what this is, then?" She reached into her pocket and pulled out a slip of parchment with a small, terrifyingly familiar name written on it. He schooled his face into careful blankness.

"No."

"Are you sure? It looks like a name. You don't know anyone by the name of 'Draco'?"

"I'm certain that I don't," he replied in a haughty tone that usually shut people up.

"Really? Because you're English, if I'm not mistaken. That would put you at Hogwarts, no?"

_Oh shit oh shit oh shit!_

"I was homeschooled, and I fail to see what this has to do with Hogwarts."

He had to entertain the possibility that he was starting to appear a bit suspicious.

In response, she only pursed her lips and narrowed her dark eyes.

… better make that definitely suspicious. Not for the first time, he cursed himself for having passed out before he had a chance to stow that damning piece of parchment in his robes. Syncope was a side effect of his night in the Malfoy dungeons that he couldn't wait to get over.

"Well, as you can tell, we're very concerned about what has become of Ella. I know that you two talked. Did she ever mention a person who might have had interest in taking her? Did she ever mention anyone at all?"

It took all of Draco's Slytherin skills to sense the distress in her tone, but it was there, right underneath wariness.

He paused for a moment, appearing to be jogging his memory, to decide how best to answer this question.

"She did mention her parents. Just once. She said that they're 'gone,' whatever that means."

His mind was filled with the image of a couple, holding hands with Ella between them, dropping her at this shite-hole and apparating away.

He ground his teeth.

"Her parents are dead," she responded flatly, studying his response.

_Oh_.

He wasn't sure what she saw in his expression, but it motivated her to go on.

"They were killed in a Death Eater raid in Bristol. When Ella was found, huddling in a cupboard under the kitchen sink, she was manifesting catastrophically; her neighbors would have had to be obliviated based on her actions alone. The aurors on the scene thought it would be safest to take her to a facility far away, so she was brought here for the treatment of her injuries."

_Oh_, was again his first thought. His brain sure was functioning highly today.

But if they were killed in a raid, that would mean…

_Her parents had been muggles. _

And now Voldemort, in all likelihood, had her within his grasp again, for who other than Death Eaters could possibly have been responsible for the note?

She was probably dead already, and it was his fault. At least it was because of him that they had come here, and when they had not found him, they had taken Ella instead. She would be a tiny, though charming, consolation prize for the Dark Lord and likely would become a delectable midnight snack for Nagini. That's what mudbloods were good for, after all.

He doubled over from his upright sitting position and retched off the side of his bed, the mental image evidently too much for him to handle.

"Oh, dear…" Healer Torres started, and she acted instinctively, Vanishing the partially digested hospital food that was spreading over the clean, smooth linoleum floors and simultaneously performing diagnostic spells over his prostrate body. After a moment of muttering to herself as she examined him, she addressed her comments to him once again.

"I can't find anything to explain the vomiting, but maybe you should take it easy for a little while."

There was a long pause before Draco realized that he had been spoken to and was expected to answer.

"Okay."

"So I'll leave you here to get your rest, and you can call if you need someone. Just take small sips of water, no food for a little while, alright?"

"Yeah," he responded numbly.

"And Odin?"

_Odin? Oh, right, me. I'm Odin. _

He looked at her vacantly, waiting for her to continue.

"I'm worried about her, too."

* * *

_He knew he was back in the dungeons, but it was dark and the air pressed in on him so much he couldn't see. He was alone with the sounds of his family's opulent manor creaking above him and the soft dripping of water as it trickled down the ancient stone walls._

_Faintly, he heard a familiar sniffling sound from somewhere in the dungeon. _

_She was here! They hadn't killed her yet. Maybe if he could find her… _

_He moved around in circles, trying to better pinpoint the source of the sound, but to no avail. He was lost in the darkness._

_Suddenly, he heard his father's voice._

_"Draco, son, you have done well. The gift of this mudblood child will please the Dark Lord. He has plans for them, you know…" _

_He realized that he couldn't save her. He had brought her here. _

_A match was lit somewhere in the distance. It illuminated his father's form as he hunched over a small heap of rags that had been carelessly tossed in the middle of the floor. _

_He silently stepped toward the scene before him. When he arrived, his father turned to look at him imperiously, every inch the Malfoy patriarch. _

_"Take her. Give her to the Dark Lord. He will give you another chance. You will return home." He gestured toward the pile of rags, which Draco then noticed was shaking. Ella._

_He knew what he must do. Once again, he was to kill or be killed, and he'd get it right this time. _

_He leaned down to pick up his former roommate, who was so covered in mud and filth that he was certain it would rub off on him if he touched her. Heedless of the dirt, he lifted her to his chest and began to carry her to the staircase that would lead to Voldemort. _

_"Draco?" came a little voice at his ear. He didn't respond._

_"Draco, I'm scared," whispered the little girl who had tried to hide her fear from him so many times while she was in hospital. _

_Still, he kept silent. He walked relentlessly toward his destination. It was coming now, the light at the top of the stairs growing brighter and brighter… _

* * *

_Fuck the morning_.

It was so bright in his room that he couldn't stay in bed any longer. It had become his habit to sleep in, now that there was no annoying little hand shaking him awake at the most ungodly of morning hours, but he'd found that there was only so long that his body would sleep.

It was tragic, really. Lately he wanted to sleep all day.

He reached up to shield his single eye from the sunlight before he opened it, but what he found gave him pause.

His right cheek was… wet?

After just a moment of confusion, the memory of his dream came flooding back, guilt and sadness forming a wave that threatened to overcome him.

He didn't want to think about it.

He had done such a good job of _not thinking about it_.

So now it was invading his dreams in retribution?

Damn his guilt, damn that little girl, damn everything! Why hadn't he died when he'd had the chance? Honestly, once he found the motherfucker who'd saved his maimed body and brought him to this shabby excuse for a hospital, he'd off himself right in front of him out of spite.

Now he was angry, which was good. Anger he could deal with.

He latched onto it as if it were the last lifeline he had. He filled the gap in his chest that Ella had left behind with it until it overflowed.

He stood from his bed and walked to the bathroom to wash the salty grime from his face once and for all; there would be no more crying.

* * *

"So, Odin, we have to talk about your discharge."

"Discharge?" It hadn't occurred to him that he'd be leaving so soon. He didn't have anywhere to go, and he was a fugitive. Maybe he could get his hands on some Polyjuice potion. His almost white blond mop was sure to be recognized by wizards throughout Europe by now, not to mention the attention that the eyepatch would attract.

"Yes. Discharge. You don't really need daily supervision anymore, and we need to free up some beds."

What the hell was he supposed to do when he got out? He made a decision, then: When he found the Motherfucker, he was going to give him a swift kick in the balls first. Then he'd off himself.

"As for your payment…"

He winced. Payment?

"It has been taken care of."

"And who, might I ask, was responsible for this?"

"We have no idea. You were left here, quite literally on our doorstep, with a sack full of galleons. A note explained that it was to cover your medical expenses, with a generous donation and appreciation for our discretion. We're a poor hospital, Odin. We don't ask any questions when we're given that kind of money."

_Well, damn_.

"So when will you be sending me off, then?" he asked, the concern he felt just barely evident in his tone.

"Two days."

His heart plummeted. In forty-eight hours, he would not only be homeless, he would be a homeless villain. Scratch that: A one-eyed homeless villain.

"We have some potions that we'll be sending with you that you must continue to take. You haven't fully recovered, so we need to prevent infection in your eye socket and a _Cruciatus_ relapse. You'll have to clean the eye wound every other day and monitor for signs of redness and swelling. The potions we'll be sending you home with are…"

He stopped listening. He knew what they were. The ugly, viscous green one was for prevention of _Cruciatus_ relapse. It allegedly repaired the extensive sensory nerve damage that the curse caused. The glassy red one was a broad-spectrum antibiotic and anti-inflammatory drug. After weeks of treatment, they had finally started to get the insidious infection under control; the Curse that Lucius had used on him had truly been a nasty one.

He'd take the potions, though he hated being ordered around by this healer woman, for he didn't want to know what would happen to him if he didn't.

That night, he got into his bed and shut his light hastily, angrily, as had become his custom. He hadn't really been that tired, but he didn't know what else to do. He stared at the ceiling, teeth grinding, as minutes ticked by, trying to even his breaths and inviting the blessed peace of sleep to come and take him.

It did, eventually, though not in the way he'd wanted.

He heard his door open and his eye was suddenly bathed in the wedge of light that entered from the hall. Blinded, he had no way to tell who was entering his room at such an uncharacteristically late hour. All he could discern was a tall, dark figure that stepped to his left side to approach his bed. After that, he couldn't have a hope of seeing anything at all.

Having been quite close to sleep, Draco's brain couldn't become roused enough to allow him to reach for his wand, or even cry out, before he was gagged and bound magically and silently.

His right eye, now locked open and staring straight ahead, saw the black figure reach into a pocket and pull something out to examine in the single sliver of light that illuminated the room.

It was a vial of potion. His gaze was immediately lost in the darkness of the liquid; it was like staring into space, the blackness so deep and that it implied lightyears of emptiness.

He really didn't want to drink this potion, but he was certain the figure had other plans.

His heart beat furiously in his chest, hard and fast, his ears pulsing with it. The man in black turned to him, features still obscure in the darkness, and leant down to him. The figure placed a gloved hand on his cheek as if holding his head to examine his face more closely.

_No, no, oh please Gods, no…_

Moving that hand down to his chin, the figure opened his jaw and, in one swift motion, brought the vial to Draco's lips and poured the wretched potion into his mouth. Gravity and instinct did the rest of the work; he had to swallow the potion lest he drown in it.

As the liquid flowed over his taste buds and its aroma burned his sinuses, he was hit with an attack of pseudo-_déjà vu_: he remembered this. He had been here before.

And he knew no more.


	5. Point of Intersection

**A/N: **Mr. Potter & Co don't belong to me!

Thanks to Likeabear for being the best! I'm enjoying our increasingly ridiculous comments to each other on documents :)

* * *

Chapter 5: Point of Intersection

Hermione knew that her journey on the Hogwarts Express would be full of things she had already seen, things that had happened before, but she didn't expect the similarities to draw her attention so relentlessly toward the few key differences.

She was not sent through platform 9 ¾ by her family, nor would she be eating a lunch that had been prepared for her by her mother. She had no care package to look forward to, filled with quills and cakes, dental floss, and a small personal stash of PG Tips, topped with an unsigned note of encouragement and well-wishes for a good semester at school. Her large ginger tomcat would not be warming her lap while she dozed against the windows at the sides of her train car.

At the thought, she allowed the sadness of being without Crookshanks to wash over her for a moment before she forced an image of him sitting on her father's lap as he read the morning paper to take hold. Though she was a woman of little faith, she hoped in that moment that the religions that might inform such an image were correct. Smiling minutely to herself, she resolved to take a nap before she lost the serenity of the moment. The sooner she reached Hogwarts and its various distractions, the better.

Of course, however, peace was hard to come by on the Hogwarts Express, especially when she had the two biggest dunderheads in the school sharing her car.

"Oi, Hermione! Get the door?" shouted Harry from the aisle side of the sliding door that had separated her from the markedly more hectic outside world.

Her eyes shot open and she took a deep breath as she got up to oblige him, noting how his and Ron's arms were completely filled with overpriced, sugary snacks. She predicted that a chocolate frog would be struggling to escape the trap of her bushy hair within ten minutes.

"Thanks!" he said, dumping his spoils into an empty seat. The boys sat on the benched seat across from her, each absorbed in organizing his belongings. They seemed a little too absorbed to Hermione, who was waiting patiently for the onslaught of gossip about their classmates that never came.

"Well?" she asked, knowing that they'd have something to divulge from their excursion.

"Well what?" asked Ron, his mouth full of cauldron cake.

"You know what. Did you see anyone? Neville? Luna? Malfoy, even?"

"Err…" started Harry, "yeah, there's a group of Slytherins sitting together in a car not far off. They seem excited to be returning this year, what with Dumbledore…." He trailed off for a moment, and Hermione was forced to acknowledge that this day wasn't hard for only her. Harry had not only lost a mentor but also was increasingly aware of the danger to his own life at Hogwarts. Going back, though necessary, could not be easy for him.

"Oh Harry, I'm so sorry. This must be so hard for you," was all she could come up with as she looked across the car at her friend. He was fumbling with the wrapper to some sweet or another, but the stress was evident on his face for a moment before he plastered on a careful expression of nonchalance.

Chastening herself for being appallingly selfish, Hermione continued to sit quietly in her seat, waiting for someone else to break the awkward silence that had fallen among them.

Clearing his throat loudly, Ron took up the task.

"Yeah, I bet they're all pleased as punch about Snape taking over, the greasy git. I wonder how hard it would be to get him alone in one of those isolated potions storerooms…"

"Come on, Ron, we've talked about this," replied Hermione, "if he's the headmaster now, we have to treat him as such. Otherwise you'll be spending all your time in detention and you won't be able to help Harry."

"How can you stay so calm about it? He killed Dumbledore! Harry saw it!"

"Ron, I know what Harry saw. We've been over it countless times. We decided that returning to Hogwarts was the best way of continuing the mission, so we're going to have to deal with Snape. You will have to behave yourself."

"But, Hermione –"

"Hermione's right," said Harry quietly, "and as much as we might hate him for what he's done, we mustn't draw attention to ourselves. We have to find the horcruxes."

"Speaking of…" started Hermione hopefully, "how is that search going? When can I have my books back and start my research again?"

"When we're ready for it," replied Harry. Well _that_ was cryptic.

"You're not even going to tell me what you're working on?"

"A basic game plan. That's all you need to know. It's only been a few weeks, and we think you could use a little more time to adjust to being back at school."

He made eye contact with her, apology written across his features, but it did nothing to abate her frustration. She had _had_ enough time! Their patronizing was becoming completely insufferable, but she knew there was no arguing with them.

Predictably, Ron remained silent and still throughout their exchange, and it made her angry. She was tired of him getting away with sitting innocently by while Harry served as the spokesperson for their plan to improve her mental health. Her mounting irritation at him was compounded by a number of factors, none of them positive. She was frustrated by his refusal to even pretend that he would try to behave around Professor Snape. She was tired of him talking with his mouth full, the way he sometimes seemed completely blind to her feelings, and his insipid fixation on Quidditch. She still felt victimized every time she remembered the kiss he had initiated earlier that summer and blamed him for the fact that she had avoided being alone with him since. Things were different between them, and it made her angry. Frustrated by all that had happened and the situation they were currently in, she lashed out at Ron before even considering what she was about to say.

"Don't you just sit there looking innocent, you prat! You're anything but innocent!" She narrowed her eyes at him, breathing heavily. She was ready and willing for a fight. All he had to do was take the bait.

"_What_ are you talking about?" he responded, looking appropriately frightened.

"You know what I'm talking about, Ron, or did you think that I'd forget if you just pretended it never happened?"

Oh yes, she was mad about this kiss, and it had taken until just now to realize just how mad. She knew that he had ruined something by making his move in that moment, and she felt cheated out of that something. She was angry that he had kissed her, she was angry that she'd never want him to kiss her again, and she was angry that those two feelings seemed to so directly oppose each other. Confusion was a feeling that she didn't bear well.

"Err, maybe we should talk about this, y'know, later…" he replied after a moment. His face was getting redder by the moment; soon, it would match his hair. His eyes bore into hers, beseeching, before he stole a quick glance at Harry to see if his friend had caught on.

Harry, politely, had taken to looking out the window at the landscape rushing by.

"I don't think so. I think I've said all there is to say on the subject. In fact, maybe I should leave you two alone for a little while to conspire some more about my emotional health behind my back."

With that, she gathered her things as quickly as possible despite her fumbling and walked out of the car to begin her search for an empty space to cool off in. With her eyes downcast and her mind lost in its own turmoil, her steps were halted as she collided with a solid object blocking her way through the central walkway.

"Excuse – " she started as she looked up into the smug, remarkably puggish face of Pansy Parkinson.

"Hey, watch where you're going, Granger! I think you might have broken my toe just now when you stepped on it with your giant, clumsy foot. Five points from Gryffindor."

Looking down a few inches from Pansy's smiling face, Hermione caught the image of the silver Head Girl badge glinting proudly from her adversary's chest.

Hermione had known that she wouldn't be chosen as Head Girl under Snape, a fact that had been confirmed when she had gotten her letter this summer announcing that she had been made prefect, but _Pansy Parkinson_? That stung. She had to look away to hide her grimace.

"Well move along, Granger, stop blocking the walkway. Oh, and don't be late to my prefect meeting tomorrow night, 7 o'clock"

Hermione didn't need to look at her again, for she could just hear the evil smile in her tone. _Great_, she thought, _now even being a prefect will be terrible_.

But she remembered one thing in her life that wasn't terrible – at least, she didn't think it was going to be. She had a mission, a purpose, one that she had been handpicked for, and that she was meant to keep secret from even Harry and Ron.

The thought brought her joy. She found a new lightness in her step as she made her way into an empty railway car at the end of the train, preparing to take the nap from which she had been so rudely interrupted earlier.

* * *

She woke to the clumsy sound of Ron pushing the sliding door to her car open. She opened her eyes and took him in, noting his nervousness with just the slightest amount of sympathy as he shuffled his feet awkwardly in the doorway, looking unsure of whether he would be permitted to come in.

There wasn't much to feel bad for. Mostly, he had brought this on himself.

"Umm… I just came to tell you that we'll be there soon. We didn't want you to be left behind on the train."

"Oh, and that's it?" She looked at him expectantly.

"Oh, err, and maybe we should talk?"

"Is that really a question?"

"Not really, I guess. I just wasn't sure you'd want to right now."

Instead of answering, she raised her eyebrow and gestured toward the seat directly across from her. He shuffled in stiffly and sat, back ramrod straight, as if waiting for an axe to fall.

"Well, talk," she said, gesturing with her hand for him to go on. He gulped.

"I guess I just want to say that I've thought – a _lot_ – about what happened, and I'm sorry. You were trying to tell me that we should just be friends and I – I screwed it up, didn't I?"

She looked around for a moment, warring between continued frustration and a desire to avoid damaging his feelings further. Why did he have to make it like this?

"Ron, I just – I'm sorry, but yeah. You did."

They looked at each other for a beat, both filled with regret.

"Well, can't we just try to pretend it never happened? Just erase it and start over?" asked Ron.

He looked so young and sad. It made the truth of what Hermione was about to say that much harder.

"I really wish it could be different, but I don't think I can do that."

"Oh… okay…" he trailed off. As Hermione watched, he shifted his gaze to the floor and took a breath as he looked around the vicinity of his feet. When his gaze finally made its way back up to her, his expression was resigned with a sad half-smile gracing his features.

"Well, can we be friends again?" he asked earnestly.

"I'd like that," Hermione responded with a small smile of her own, and he helped her gather her things and carry them from the train car. As they walked together toward the car that she had vacated earlier, they felt the train begin to slow and watched as Hogwarts gradually came into view. The picture was as lovely and full of promise to Hermione as it had been when she was eleven, and it still represented the same thing: a new beginning, a fresh start. She was ready for it.

* * *

The feast was, Hermione was certain, magnificent as usual.

From the moment they entered the Great Hall, however, she had been distracted to the point of inability to either notice or comment on the quality and quantity of the overabundance of food before her. She wasn't even sure if she had indeed eaten by the time it was done.

Severus Snape was seated in the middle of the head table, as was customary for the headmaster.

Indeed, she had known to expect such a change. She had known that Dumbledore was dead. She had even attended his funeral. But somehow the knowledge of what was coming had not adequately prepared her for the sight of the dark potions master in command of the head table or for the gloating of the Slytherin table that inevitably followed. She glanced frequently at Professor McGonagall, who appeared strained, perhaps a little thin, but not terribly the worse for wear, and hoped fervently that her head of house would actually be able to protect them. She knew that they would probably have to leave Hogwarts before the school year ended, but it was vital to finish horcrux investigations first.

The feast concluded, as usual, with a speech by the headmaster. Snape stood slowly from his seat and merely cleared his throat, prompting the entire hall to grow silent. Hermione took a breath and held it, staring at his tall dark form intently, waiting for him to start.

"Students, faculty members, it brings me great pleasure to address myself to you this evening as your new headmaster," he started, his voice, silky and low, never faltering. "I call upon you all to see this new beginning as an opportunity to make a Hogwarts education more… well-rounded."

Snickers could be heard from the Slytherin crowd as they deduced the undeniable meaning of his last words; he would be instituting the study of magic that was more _dark_. Hermione felt stick to her stomach.

Snape smirked and continued, "I expect you all to adhere to Hogwarts rules with the assurance that they will be strongly enforced. As usual, the forbidden forest and the North and South towers are strictly prohibited. Though some students might think themselves above the rules, I assure you that they are not. I will catch anyone who goes traipsing about where they do not belong." With his last statement, his eyes shot threateningly toward the area of the Gryffindor table where Harry, Ron and Hermione always sat.

Hermione's heart leapt in her chest. Did he know? And, if he did, what ever could she do about it? She wouldn't - couldn't - abandon her mission. She would just have to be extra careful. Perhaps, though she had been planning to investigate the North tower later in the week, she should go tonight when the students and faculty were bound to be distracted by back-to-school parties and the induction of new first years. On further contemplation, she decided that this was undeniably the best plan. Resigned, she felt anxiety rise in her chest at the prospect.

She _could_ do this! She was going to. Her brain would tell her two feet to walk in the direction that she needed to go, she would eventually arrive at that place, and it was that simple. She numbly felt herself clapping politely along with her classmates as Snape returned to his seat, his address concluded.

"Greasy git…" said Ron to her left, and for once, neither she nor Harry reprimanded him.

"Hey," asked Harry after a moment, "did you guys notice anything off about the Slytherin table?"

"No, mate. Just being huge prats as usual. Why?" responded Ron.

"I can't quite put my finger on it, but it seems like something was missing…" continued Harry thoughtfully.

"Would you be referring to the absence of one Draco Malfoy?" Hermione chimed in. In truth, she had been looking for him. She wanted to be ready when he inevitably approached Harry to intimidate him before the start of term, as was his tradition. She wasn't sure Harry would be able to take much of it this year. But she never found him.

"Oh – oh right," said Harry. "I guess that after what he did, or didn't do, he wouldn't be able to return to Hogwarts, no matter who is in charge now."

"I suspect that he may not have lived through the summer," replied Hermione. "You heard what he said, Harry. He had to kill Dumbledore or they'd kill him. Well, he obviously didn't hold up his end of the bargain."

"You really think they killed him?" asked Ron, looking shocked.

"It's Voldemort," said Harry. "He kills children, babies, mothers – whoever suits him at the time. I don't doubt he'd kill Draco if he wanted to."

An awkward, sad silence followed while the friends processed the melancholy that had fallen over them at the idea of Draco's murder. Sure, they had hated him and he had been terrible, but he didn't deserve to die.

Uncomfortable as she already was, Hermione was not inclined to continue in this vein of discussion, which would undoubtedly compound her nervousness. She set about changing the subject.

"So Harry, are you looking forward to the common room party later?" Hermione asked, distracting Harry from the brooding that he was currently indulging in. "I distinctly remember Fred and George telling us that we were responsible for filching from the kitchen now that they've graduated. Of course, they couldn't possibly have meant for me to do it, so that leaves you and Ron."

"Right, Hermione, we wouldn't want you to get caught. Or worse, _expelled_," responded Harry, his serious expression belying the humor evident in his tone.

She rolled her eyes at him. "You won't be laughing if one of us steps a single toe out of line, gets caught, and is expressly expelled. Dumbledore may have let us get away with all sorts of mischief, but Snape would love nothing better to expel any one of us. Speaking of mischief, you did remember to bring your invisibility cloak, right?"

"Yes, Hermione," he said indulgently, "It was on the itemized packing list you gave me, after all."

Both boys snickered and even Hermione had to admit to herself that she was being ridiculous. She was just anxious about what lay ahead for her that night, and her fretting was spilling over the confines of her control just a little.

"Well someone has to tell you what to pack. Left to your own devices, you'd probably have left your own ears behind!"

"Alright, maybe we could stop with the stressful stuff and try to focus on just relaxing and having fun tonight?" said Ron. "Hermione, that means no more nagging – blimey, you sound just like my mum sometimes!"

She punched her friend in the arm good-naturedly and they made their way to the Gryffindor common room, discussing all the while the most discreet route to the kitchens and how much butterbeer they would need. Part of Hermione's thoughts, however, were on her plan for stealing the cloak from Harry later that night and how she was beginning to feel slightly guilty about the very large secret that she was going to keep from them.

* * *

Draco had awoken three days ago, a mass of confusion and irritation, on the very same four-poster bed in which he currently found himself.

He had yet to determine how he had gotten here, the identity of the cloaked man who had drugged him, and where he exactly "here" was.

What he could determine was that he was a prisoner to this small bedroom and its adjoining bathroom, that house-elves brought all of his meals to him but never stayed long enough for him to get a good look at them or question them, and that he had been brought here without his medications, a fact that he was sure would have consequences that he wasn't ready to think about.

His left eye socket was hurting.

And, perhaps most importantly, he had noticed fairly early on that he did not have his wand.

By the end of the first day, he'd realized that whoever had brought him here did not mean to kill him or he'd probably already be dead. This fact that had passed through his mind with little celebration, as he still held weakly on to a hope that a quick and painless death would come for him soon, before Voldemort could.

On the second day, he had become anxious and frustrated enough, locked as he was in a small space and no knowledge of what was to happen to him, that he experienced a fit of rage. He grabbed every item in reach that was not fixed to the walls or floorboards and threw it across the room. Books slammed against the sides of his enclosure with satisfying crashes and landed, wide open, on the wooden planked floor. Glasses shattered against beige walls, sharp shards of glass exploding where cylindrical cups used to be and landing on the floor in various piles around the perimeter of the room. His green bedsheets and quilt were ripped from his bed, thrown to the floor, and stomped on in a particularly childish display. By the end, he was standing, shirtless, in the middle of his personal jail, panting and sweating, before he stalked over to his bare mattress and threw himself upon it so that he could stare at the ceiling and grind his teeth for a while.

Lying on his stripped bed, he had contemplated how far he'd fallen from the dignified, collected Malfoy heir that he had been raised to be. Later that evening, he had shaken the shards of glass from his bedclothes, placed them back onto his bed, and showered. He'd decided that he could be clean at the very least.

On the morning of the third day, the same day in which he currently found himself, he had resignedly begun to investigate his surroundings, and what he'd found had surprised him. It appeared that this room had not been used in about twenty years, and when it had, a _muggle_ had inhabited it. Muggle items (those which he hadn't destroyed the day before) were still arranged about and were in seemingly perfect condition. There was no dust in the room to speak of, so it had clearly been maintained, but it seemed like outdated items had simply been left where their owner had last placed them, not to be thought about or touched again until he had moved in.

It was curious.

There was a small stack of cardboard sleeves near the door with what he assumed were muggle music groups depicted on the front. Inside these sleeves were flat black plastic discs with grooves cut into them. Near this collection was a device on which they could be placed, flat-side down, that had an attached arm and needle apparatus that he wasn't keen on touching. On a desk that was located on to the left side of the room, he had found a strange item that lit up when he pressed a button on the back of it. It was filled with orange tinted fluid and had darker orange globs floating in it. After his first experiment with it, he had no desire to lay a hand on it again. It was, at least, proof that muggles were completely insane.

Above the bed, which sat against the far wall and faced the door, he'd examined a large black muggle poster that simply said the words "Star Wars" in yellow lettering. He had shaken his head at this; he'd never understand what muggles could find desirable about posters that were so stationary and flat. He wasn't certain what "Star Wars" was, but he had an idea that involved star charts and constellations that made him completely uninterested. On the right side of the room was a large fireplace with a small stack of wood next to it and matches on the mantle, as if he'd ever be able to light a fire without magic. As if he'd ever have the desire to.

The only clue he found to indicate where exactly he might be was a window situated next to the desk on the left wall. It depicted a vast green lawn giving way to a lush forest as far as his eye could see that was strongly reminiscent of Hogwarts. However, he put no stock at all in the view through the window, for he was certain that such things could be tampered with. He didn't want to allow himself to hope that he could be holed up in his old school. It simply wasn't possible.

The thing that was most exciting about this room was a bookshelf that he had found to the side of the desk opposite the window. After he had picked up the books that he'd thrown about the day before and placed them back onto its shelves, he'd spent many minutes investigating the titles that stared at him mockingly from their display. He and the books both knew that they were all he had left, and that his time would become filled with them whether he enjoyed it or not.

Finishing his meal from atop his bed, he now returned to the teeming bookshelf to continue his perusal of it.

What he found was muggle literature from various time periods up through the late 1970s. He took time to alphabetize them by their author's last names, shelving them as he came upon them: Austen, Jane preceded Lord Byron, George; Dickens, Charles came before Frank, Anne, which was followed by Hughes, Langston; and so forth, all the way to Shakespeare, William; Tolkien, JRR; and Vonnegut, Kurt. By his estimation, there had to be at least a hundred of them. He hated to admit it, but he was thrilled. He had always loved reading, and he expected that even muggles couldn't muck it up too badly.

By the time he finished alphabetizing his new book collection, night had fallen and he had already eaten dinner, which was surprisingly delicious compared to what he'd been brought thus far. Tired and slightly satisfied in spite of himself, he decided to spend the rest of the evening reading. This way, he could be distracted from the constant level of worry he was experiencing about his lack of medicines, the infection in his eye socket, and the steadfastly present, though slightly dampened, grief that he felt over Ella, whom he had been successfully not thinking about for days now.

He addressed the bookshelf before him with the only logical approach he could come up with. Starting at the very beginning, he picked Jane Austen's _Emma_ from the shelf and carried it to his bed to begin reading.

* * *

Hermione was slightly out of breath from the exertion of climbing the endless staircase to the top of the North Tower while having to stand hunched under the invisibility cloak that she had successfully pilfered from Harry's room. As she turned through the last round of steps, her final destination jumped into existence, forcing her to accept that yes, she was really doing this and no, she could not turn back now.

She took the last round of steps slowly, taking care not to make any noise, until she came to a halt at the very top directly in front of a large wooden door.

Her heart was racing from the exertion of climbing and the intense fear that she suddenly felt at the prospect of actually _opening_ the door. What if the letter had, in fact, been a trap? What if something or someone truly horrible was hidden up here, and she would soon find herself alone with it and completely at its mercy?

Maybe she wasn't equipped for this special secret mission, after all. Maybe she should just go back to the safety Gryffindor common room…

But she thought of her parents and the sacrifice that they had made. She thought of Crookshanks. She thought of Harry. If they were all capable of doing their parts, surely she was, too. So after the brief moment of fearful doubt had passed, once and for all, she reminded herself to breathe deeply, pointed her wand at the door, and whispered, "_Alohomora_."

* * *

Draco was interrupted suddenly by a strange clicking sound that he hadn't yet heard in the three days he'd been in this room. He looked up quickly from his novel to assess the door, rising to stand next to his bed.

_Fuck,_ was his only clear thought at that moment.

Someone had unlocked the door. Someone was about to _open_ the door.

They were finally coming for him, then. Here he had been, deciding how best to read the huge collection of books in this prison cell, when he had not had more than an hour or two left to him. He was an idiot. His mind raced, realizing the direness of his present position; he would have to face whomever was at the door without his wand. Without it he felt helpless.

Alarms were going off in his head, but there was nowhere he could go and nothing he could think of employing to defend himself, so he used what he had. He lifted the small book in his right hand and held it near his ear, ready to throw it, if necessary, at the person who was bound to enter the room.

* * *

Steeling herself, Hermione reached for the doorknob and turned, pushing the door open in front of her.

The man she found confronting her aggressively from across the room stunned her.

_My God, it couldn't be him! _She thought herself, but she was sure that it was, though he was not altogether the same as when she had seen him last.

The moment of shocked silence that stretched between them was broken by the person standing near the bed directly across from her, who was just now absently lowering a book that he'd been about to throw at her a moment ago.

"Granger?" he asked, sounding utterly dumbfounded.

She could only stare at him longer, trying to convince herself that she wasn't looking at the person she thought she was looking at.

It was no use. White blond hair, tall, lean frame, mouth turned to a sneer, and the way he said her name, as if he infused it with as much disdain as he could possibly muster, all pointed to one person.

"Malfoy," she responded, narrowing her eyes, pointing her wand directly at him and homing in on his face, which had always been flawless and perfectly symmetrical. Now, however, a black eyepatch stood where his left eye used to be. It contrasted sharply with grey orb to its right, for the right eye appeared clear and unharmed, reminding the left of what it had once been and what it would likely never be again.

"Granger, if you continue to point that wand at me in my own prison cell, I'm going to have to ask you to leave."


	6. A Delightful Visit

**A/N: I don't own HP.**

Vet school is hard! It's taken a while for me to recover enough to write again, and clearly I'm not over my immersion in medicine, as evidenced by all the gross descriptions in the chapter... enjoy!

* * *

Chapter 6: A Delightful Visit

"It was a delightful visit—perfect, in being much too short." – Jane Austen, _Emma_.

"I'm warning you, Malfoy. Don't make a move. If you so much as take a step toward me, I'll-"

"You'll _what_, Granger? I don't think you've got the guts to do anything at all, other than perhaps recite arithmancy equations at me until I bleed out through my ears," he said and moved to take a step forward.

"Everte statum!" she shouted at him, just as his foot was hitting the floor. The rage she was feeling enhanced the force of her spell and his frail body was lifted into the air and hurled backwards, contacting the far wall with a loud crash.

Hermione had to think fast. She figured she had 15, maybe 20 seconds until he pulled himself from a heap on the floor to confront her, and she needed to adjust to what had just happened.

At least some of the rage she'd felt on seeing him again had been expelled since she'd let loose the offensive spell. However, he was still a horrible, evil little prat. It was his fault that Death Eaters entered Hogwarts at the end of last year, and it was his fault that she'd had to attend Dumbledore's funeral not long after.

But it wouldn't do to dwell on such thoughts just now. She needed to prevent the rage from boiling over again, not nurture it. She needed to face the truth: this was the person that the mysterious Order member had hidden in the tower; this was the person she was supposed to help restore to health.

She'd rather stun him and leave him here to rot.

But Hermione had always been apt at following directions in spite of her personal feelings. She felt the mantle of duty settle about her, and she knew that she'd accepted what she must do. She would look after Malfoy despite how much they hated each other and despite how much of a fight he'd inevitably raise against her. If he needed healing potions, and he might by the looks of him, she'd get him to take them even if she had to put him in a body bind and pour them down his throat. As for getting information from him that might help the Order, she could think of that task as the light at the end of the long, dark tunnel that this experience was bound to be.

And with that thought, her fifteen seconds of recovery time were over. Malfoy was standing up, reaching to grab the novel that had fallen from his hands in the crash. He looked angrier than she'd ever seen him before, and underneath that, hidden better than she imagined possible under the circumstances, she saw fear. Of what, she was not exactly sure, for he was certainly not afraid that _she_ would hurt him.

As he stood in front of her, clothing all awry, huffing in anger at her, she finally took the chance to notice how terrible he looked. He was paler than usual, strikingly pasty white. His skin was thin, almost translucent over his prominent cheekbones, and his clavicles were showing clearly under his thin green robes. The skin emerging from underneath his black eye patch appeared red and swollen.

The academic in Hermione wondered what could have happened to him and what could be causing him to be so sick right now. The part of her that was sad to see any suffering in another human being, even someone she hated, felt sorry for him. The part that housed her sense of duty was concerned about what she would do next. The last part, the deepest and most obscured part of her that she wanted not to acknowledge, was truly worried and concerned for Malfoy. It was the part that knew that deep down he was not altogether evil, that it was not his choice to be born into such a detestable family, and that his current injury was probably the work of the terrorist group his own parents supported.

As far as that last part was concerned, she wished she could just forget it, and that was what she decided to do. It certainly would make loathing him easier. If only he didn't appear so broken and frightened, her job might be a little more simple.

She gave him a level look and addressed him so that she could figure out what to do next.

"Ok Malfoy, now that you believe I'll hex you, I am going to ask you some questions."

He didn't even acknowledge that she'd spoken.

"Ok then. Err… I need to know what happened to you."

"I don't have to answer to _you_," he said, his last word dripping with disgust.

"Come on. You know as well as I do that I have the upper hand in this situation. I have a wand. I have the power to go to Snape and tell him that you're here. You are helpless."

"Fine, Granger. Hex me all you want. I'm just going to sit and enjoy the rest of my evening, pretending that you don't exist. In fact, I think I'll pretend that you never existed. It will be so lovely."

With that, he took his book back onto his bed and began rifling through the pages to find where he'd left off. She began brainstorming ways to get him to talk to her, for she wasn't really going to hex him again when he looked so sickly. And she certainly couldn't tell Snape, though the look on his face when she mentioned his old head-of-house was one of fleeting, barely concealed terror.

She had yet to come up with anything when he spoke again.

"I know you have no breeding to speak of, but I would think even you might recognize a dismissal when you see one."

And that, apparently, was the last straw. Hermione allowed her rage at Malfoy to crash through her careful holding walls, all pity and sorrow for him forgotten. He truly did not deserve it.

"You're a terrible prat, you know that, Malfoy? You're a failure. You deserve to just die up here in this tower, all alone. So I'll leave you to it." She turned to go.

"How dare you speak to me that way, you filthy m–" He started, rising to stand next to his bed once again, but before he could finish the insult, she'd walked three strides toward him and pointed her wand directly at his throat.

"Don't you dare utter that disgusting word to me, Malfoy. I'm warning you."

By now she had stalked fully up to his bed, her wand merely two inches from his Adam's apple, which protruded at just about the level of her nose.

His eye shone with defiance and his lips curled into an ugly sneer.

"Mudblood."

With a flick of her wand up toward his face, Hermione said, "_Pulso,_" producing a satisfying slap as a hard gust of air whipped across his cheek. The affected area immediately blanched and she knew he'd soon bear an angry red mark.

But there was something wrong. His eye grew wide and his face became panicked, and he took a few staggering steps backward so that he stood up against the far wall for support. He was taking deep, studied breaths and seemed to teeter on the edge of collapse with only the wall behind him holding him up.

"Oh! What happened?" she asked, forgetting part of her rage and taking a tentative step toward him. What she'd do when she reached him, she couldn't say.

"Nothing. I'm fine," he replied, and it sounded like it was taking the life out of him to just utter those three words. His head was hanging so that she could hardly see his face through the fringe of pale hair that hung limply in front of it.

"But Malfoy, I – "

"Just get out!"

She took another step toward him, getting close enough to glimpse his face. It was even paler than it had been before, and had taken on a sickly greenish hue. He seemed not to notice that she had come so close, too close, so she instinctively reached out to grab his arm, to offer some support, for his legs would surely give any moment.

The flesh of his arm was burning hot, and she drew her hand away in shock as if she'd actually been burned.

He'd felt her touch. He looked up at her through the pallid strands that still hung in front of his face. His right eye was bloodshot and the skin around the left had become a disturbing shade of crimson.

"Get," he started, and then took one shaky breath before continuing, "out."

She couldn't help but run; the image of his face had filled her with fear. She ran to the door as quickly as she could, locking it behind her. She ran all the way to the library. Under the guise of the invisibility cloak, she strode directly to the restricted section. She needed to look up Dark infectious curses, and quickly, for she knew that a fever of magical origin was not a good sign.

* * *

_This is not a good sign_, Draco thought as held onto the wall to steady himself. His head felt like it was floating above his neck, and the back of his neck was hot. Really hot.

He needed to sit down. He carefully made his way back to the bed, panting with the effort, and promptly put his head between his legs. He felt his heartbeat pound in his ears and knew a little relief, so he lay himself down on the bed.

Sleep. He needed sleep, and then he would feel better. Though his mouth felt full of cottonballs and he could feel the parching of his lips, he didn't think he had the strength to get up for a glass of water. It would have to wait. Besides, the room wouldn't stop spinning… how was he supposed to make it to the sink if the floor refused to stay still?

* * *

_Darke Spells for Darke Wizards_, by Bertrand Robespierre, page 358:

_Exacto Ocularis_ is a curse that will result in the permanent removal of the subject's eye at which the caster is pointing. The first recorded use of this curse was in the late nineteenth century by an American wizard, Homer Levander. The curse is known to cause a deep infection by dark magic in the subject's eye socket, which can spread insidiously through the subject's body if gone untreated. It has been proposed that the curse causes in increase in the subject's mental insight in compensation for the loss of vision, but this belief has never been substantiated in a controlled study. Empirically, the author believes that this claim might have some truth to it, as he has used the curse himself and seen its effects first-hand.

Hermione read the passage again and again, trying to find some evidence that this was not the curse that had been used on Malfoy, but she could find none. In fact, after an hour and a half of careful research, this was the only curse she'd found that was a possible candidate.

She had been stupid to be so optimistic. Here she'd found a description of the curse that suggested that Malfoy would die if it went untreated, but it listed no treatment. Why were books constantly failing her recently? What had she done to deserve their betrayal?

Sad as she was to have failed again, she had no more time to waste on research; she needed to act, for she knew that Malfoy wouldn't last long if she didn't do something for him soon.

Hermione returned to the North tower leaden with potions that she'd nicked from the hospital wing on her way back up. She had taken all that she thought might possibly be useful in this situation: fever reducer, blood replenishing potion, antibiotic potions of various colors and strengths, pepper-up, and some other assorted salves that might be applied to the wound itself. It was the best she could do, and she couldn't dream of failing.

When she opened the door to his room, she was stricken by the heat that seemed to radiate from the walls, the floor, everywhere at once. She couldn't escape it. She closed the door behind her and feared she might suffocate, but the heat was forgotten when she saw him.

He was lying in his bed over the covers, fully clothed. His eyes were closed as if he were sleeping, but he tossed and turned restlessly and moaned incoherently as she watched.

This was what had come of him in the two hours she'd been gone.

She went to his side and sat on the bed next to him, preparing to examine him. She knew precious little of healing, but she had picked up a bit of muggle medicine from living with two dentists. She figured she would just start with the basics: get a good look at his eye socket, determine how high his fever actually was, and see if he was hydrated well enough.

First things first, she decided. She needed to lift off the eye patch. She set her lips in determination. It was now or never, for she might lose her nerve.

So she reached her faltering right hand toward the left side of his face slowly, gently touching the tissue paper skin under his left eye socket with just her middle finger. Instead of grasping the black fabric, however, her progress was halted by the burning heat that she sensed on his cheek. She'd known that he was running a fever, but she'd had no idea that it had gotten so high. She immediately leaned the back of her hand against his forehead in a reflex borne of her muggle upbringing.

It was difficult to be sure of what she was feeling. She frowned, knowing that the back of her hand wasn't nearly sensitive enough to really estimate temperature. Not for the first time, she cursed her education for leaving out enormous gaps where normal household spells should be, the kind that children of witches and wizards grew up hearing. Spells like the one that could tell her what Malfoy's temperature was right now.

But she'd have to stick to what she knew, and she was sadly certain that she wouldn't come across any thermometers at Hogwarts. That left only one other method she'd ever seen her parents use to estimate her temperature more accurately than with the back of a hand.

Hermione wasn't sure if she'd be able to bring herself to do it. This was _Draco Malfoy_ after all. He certainly would never do the same for her. And if he found out she'd touched his forehead with her lips…

She smiled at his imagined response, her mind made up.

She braced herself with one hand at either side of his head as she leaned toward him. He looked so innocent, so pitiful… How had the vile Draco Malfoy beaten this part of him down so deeply, to be drawn out only in the direst of circumstances?

That thought guided Hermione's lips slowly, hesitantly, down to his forehead. His skin was fiery under her lips, and so thin that she could feel his heartbeat running under it. She hovered frozen there for some seconds, feeling his bounding pulse four, five times before she lifted herself away.

He was very ill indeed. She wasn't sure what the pulse meant, but she knew it was significant, and his temperature had to be well over 100 degrees.

It was indeed an infection, then. She'd skimmed enough of her parents' physiology textbooks to know that much. The eye patch, more importantly what she might find under it, seemed more foreboding every moment.

She braced herself once again, determined not to get sidetracked this time. She straightened her back, took a deep breath, and reached again for where his left eye would be. She reached under the bottom of the patch and lifted it off.

Her eyes widened and her hand went immediately to cover her mouth.

It was a terrible, dark curse that had done this. She was sure of it.

His barely recognizable eyelids had been sewn shut over his empty socket. Whatever skin remained was black, and not at all similar to the black of bruises. It was a deep, unnatural black, a color she'd never before seen skin take on. Between the lids oozed a substance that was like tar, thick and dark and menacing. Surrounding the blackened skin, his tissue was enormously swollen and bright red, puffing out beyond the plane of his face. She reached out to touch the reddened skin around the perimeter and found it to be shockingly hot, much hotter than his forehead and cheeks had been.

She'd have been surprised if he weren't dehydrated, but she had only to glance at his cracked lips and his slightly sunken normal eye to verify that he needed water. But how would she get fluids into him?

She needed a healing text. In her haste to get back to the tower, she'd forgotten to bring one with her. She was failing. She had failed to keep her parents alive, and now she was going to fail with Malfoy. She didn't even like him - in fact, she reviled him. She wished fervently that she could take him to Madam Pomphrey. The healer would know what to do; she'd have him all better in a couple of days. But Hermione couldn't do that. This was all on her, and she had to succeed.

Hermione promised herself a moment for her feelings later, but for now she had to do her duty and stay calm. She replaced the eye patch and reached into her bag for her fever reducer first. She uncorked it and poured it down his throat slowly, silently praying that he wouldn't choke, though perhaps he'd deserve it if he did.

One potion down.

"Ella…" groaned Malfoy beside her.

_Ella?_

"Please… no… Ella…"

He sounded agonized. He started violently jerking his head from side to side, fighting against some imaginary enemy in his fever dream.

"Shhh… Malfoy. You're ok. Calm down."

"No… no! NO!" He said, screaming the last.

Hermione reached again into the satchel to find a salve for his eye, hoping that it might soothe him. She gathered a sizeable glop of it onto her fingers. It felt cool and pleasantly tingly. Narrowing her eyes in concentration, she peeled off the eye patch once again and gently applied the salve directly to his wound, and he immediately began to calm. She rubbed slow, careful circles, and as she rubbed, she noticed that his breathing got easier and his moaning stopped altogether. When she was satisfied that she'd applied enough, she lifted her hands from his face.

Almost immediately, his breathing became more strained and the agonizing moaning resumed.

"Gods help me, I can't believe I'm doing this," she whispered to herself, and resumed rubbing circles of ointment over his wound.

He relaxed and he started to feel less warm; the fever reducer was beginning to kick in.

And just like that, his right eye slowly opened and fixed her with a glazed, confused look. After a shocked intake of breath, she froze right where she was, afraid to speak or make a move lest he figure out what was going on and lash out at her.

"Ella?"

"Err… yeah, Mal – Draco."

His first name felt wrong on her lips.

"No – Ode," he responded, looking more confused and upset by the second.

_Ode? What is that?_

Choosing not to respond, she reached back into her satchel and pulled out an antibiotic potion. It was the one she thought might be the strongest of those she'd taken based on how they had been organized in Madam Pomphrey's cabinet.

"Take this," she said imperiously. She hoped that her tone would trick him into listening to her in his current state.

Shockingly, it worked, and he obediently downed the contents of the vial.

Pushing her luck, she took the glass she'd spied by his bedside table and charmed it to constantly fill with cool water. She handed it to him.

He didn't need any of her encouragement to drink from the glass but instead raised it immediately to his lips and slowly gulped down its entire contents. The glass dutifully refilled itself.

Hermione breathed a sigh of relief. It would seem that the worst of the night was probably over. Still, she daren't yet leave, for she had no idea how the dark infection might spread.

As she settled herself into his desk chair to watch over him for a little while longer before she would return to her own room and her own bed, she saw him drift off into a peaceful, quiet slumber. The image reminded her of how exhausted she was and what a long night it had been.

She followed him in sleep not long after, still sitting in his desk chair.


	7. Nice

**A/N: I don't own HP!**

I'm already working on chapter 8. Maybe I'll get some good writing done on vacation (Mexico. Leaving in 2 days. YAY!).

* * *

Chapter 7: Nice

Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure; men love in haste but they detest at leisure. – George Byron

* * *

It's a funny thing about fever dreams. They can be absolute bastards.

Draco dreamed of Ella, being carried off by Voldemort. She called his name out as the Dark Lord dragged her away. She thought that he could save her, but of course he couldn't. She became the cloaked man that had appeared in his room, pouring potion down his throat. Then she turned into Hermione Granger, burst through a door, and shot him with the killing curse before he even had the chance to utter a word.

And when he woke and saw Granger sitting just a few feet from him, he almost screamed aloud, reaching for a wand that wasn't there.

His head was still swimming in a haze of adrenaline, his heart beating in his throat, when reality dawned upon him and everything that had happened last night came rushing back – how she had barged into his room for no apparent reason, how she'd demanded that he tell her what happened to him, how she'd had the audacity to attack him just because he had called her mudblood…

Then how she had threatened to tell Snape about him and how he had almost passed out right in front of her.

_Damn_.

And now here she was, and so were, he noticed, empty medicine bottles on the nightstand next to him. _So she brought them, so what? She's still a horrid bitch._ He wasn't going to consider _why_ she had brought them or why she was even there. It didn't matter.

He glanced at her sleeping form and grinned wickedly as he noticed the tip of her wand peeking out of her robes. She was in for a rude awakening.

He quietly got out of bed and his head immediately started pounding with renewed vigor. His legs felt weak, like he might not make it the few steps it would take to get to her, but he painstakingly tiptoed his way to the desk chair - _His_ desk chair, which _Granger_ was sleeping in. He slowly, silently reached toward her wand. When he touched his fingers to it, a shock immediately ripped through his body and he jumped away from her.

"FUCK!" he screamed.

She woke with a start. He guessed it would have been asking too much for her to sleep through that episode.

"Malfoy! What are you doing here?" she asked, looking around the room. "Oh gods, I fell asleep! Oh no, oh no… what time is it?"

She had addressed her question to no one in particular, so he chose not to answer. Instead, he studied her from where he'd landed, looking for a weakness to exploit.

She was flitting through the room gathering her things checking to see that her wand was still in her pocket, and picking up a large black book that he couldn't see the title of.

"I have to go!" she said, running to the door.

"Oh no you don't," he replied, and strode toward the door himself. He knew he'd make it there first, and then it would be easy to block her way. He wasn't sure why he was even doing it; it wasn't as if he wanted her there. He just knew that she was in a big hurry to leave.

"Yes, I do!" She reached for her wand. "Get out of my way!"

But he realized that he did want something from her: information. He needed to know why she had appeared last night, and he _really_ needed to know how sick he'd gotten.

"Granger, you're not leaving here until you explain what happened last night."

"You don't seem to understand the meaning of _I have a wand and you don't_. I can leave whenever I want. Now. Get away from me."

He was desperate to know; he felt as if his life depended on it. There was only one way he could think of to approach this problem. Luckily, Draco excelled at manipulating wet blankets like Hermione Granger.

"I think I deserve to know, don't I? I could have died."

She sighed. He had her.

"You… fell ill."

_No shit. _

"My my, Granger, what a revelation. Now I see why they call you 'the brightest witch of your age' – or was it 'most repulsive'? So hard to keep them straight, they sound so similar."

"Fine. Have it your way." She pointed her wand at him – _again,_ he reminded himself. He could only guess at what might be coming.

"_Wingardium leviosa_," she murmured, almost bored, and he felt himself lift off the ground against his will, float across the room, and land in bed.

Once he was what she must consider a safe distance away, she let herself out and locked the door behind her without another word.

_Well, that was interesting_.

* * *

After she left, Draco realized how badly he needed a shower. His sheets could probably use a washing, too. It seemed that everything he came into contact with last night was now covered in a heavy layer of dried sweat, and it smelled dank.

He stood in front of his mirror for a long while, daring himself to take off the eye patch so he could see the infected skin underneath. He hadn't thought about it much since he'd gotten to this room, he honestly hadn't wanted to, but it was now time to know how bad it had become.

But when he got the patch off, expecting the worst, he was pleasantly surprised. Where he had thought there would be a think layer of black pus, there was only the smallest black wet line between his eyelids. The skin that covered his empty socket was still as black as the Dark Mark, but he didn't suppose that would ever go away. Where he expected his skin to be horrendously swollen and deep red, he saw only moderate inflammation. On top of everything else, his wound smelled clean and fresh, like eucalyptus and maybe a hint of aloe…

_She_ had done this! She had _touched_ him! How could she? And, more importantly, why?

Presently, Hermione Granger was just the latest of a long list of mysteries that Draco needed to solve regarding recent happenings in his life. He also feared that she was the most urgent.

What if she was really going to tell Snape that he was here? And if she knew about him, who else did? Who had told her?

He needed to breathe in the steam in the shower stall and wash away the remnants of the fever to clear his head. He undressed, still a little clumsy in illness, and turned the faucet on in a gesture that he hadn't yet quite gotten used to.

Moments later, when he felt the hot water beating down on his back and over his slightly protruding ribs, he began to relax. He was Draco _bloody_ Malfoy, and he could handle a situation like this. He could handle Granger. What had been the point of his entire life so far if he couldn't deal with a little communication problem? Why had he become so very good at getting his own way?

In fact, the more he thought about it, the gladder he was that she had shown up in his life when she did. He needed medicines and the means to get information from the outside world, gods knew he'd like a way out of this cursed room that didn't end in certain death, and he had just figured out how to get all of these things.

Granger had no idea what she was in for.

Resolved, he finished his shower quickly to curtail the queasiness brought on by the steaming water.

He felt positively cheerful as he pulled a pair of loose-fitting pants over his prominent hipbones. He almost whistled as he made his bed with the fresh sheets that had appeared during his shower, undoubtedly placed by Hogwarts house elves. He felt himself grinning stupidly as he grabbed _Emma_ from the nightstand and started reading.

Admittedly, he should have been ashamed of himself for being so happy about the prospect of having Hermione Granger in his life, but he couldn't bring himself to care. It was as if he had been presented with a shiny new plaything, and he couldn't wait to destroy it.

* * *

Hermione had hardly recovered at all from her night in Malfoy's room before she was called upon to explain her strange behavior.

"Well what were you doing all night? You look like hell, and you almost didn't make it to class on time. Not to mention, you never showed for our common room party." Ron pouted a little.

"I was… busy," she replied dumbly.

"With what? School hasn't even started yet! And last night's was the best party we've had in ages, right Harry?"

Harry nodded weakly over the game of wizard's chess that he was currently poring over.

"… And you should have seen the new first years, all young and confused. We were never that childish, were we, Harry?"

Harry just grunted in response.

"Well if you must know," Hermione started, "I did have some school work to do. It's NEWTs this year, you realize, and I've been trying to get ahead in all of our textbooks before classes really get started…"

"You're loony, you know that? I mean, we don't even know what we'll cover yet. And who knows if we'll all still be here by the time NEWTs come around…"

"Shhhh! Not so loud!" she admonished him, "Better safe than sorry, Ron," she continued in a quieter tone, "Besides, how will I ever have the time to help you two get through your classwork if I haven't had a chance to get ahead yet? Especially if you're not planning on even attempting to study on the off-chance that you'll have left school before then."

"Oh calm down. It'll turn out ok. It always does, right?"

The deeper, certainly unintentional application of what he had said seemed to hit all of them at once and they were left sitting in thoughtful silence.

"Harry, you seem a bit pre-occupied. Is everything ok?" asked Hermione.

"Err… yeah, I'm fine."

But he didn't look fine. In fact, he'd glanced over at Ginny sitting next to Dean Thomas right before he'd answered and his expression had been downright miserable. Harry had promised to stop seeing Ginny when they took on the dangerous task of hunting Horcruxes, but he'd found it hard to hide his feelings for her, or his jealousy of people like Dean. The fact that she disagreed with his decision and did whatever she could to make it more difficult didn't help matters, but Ron had insisted, so Harry was trying his best to stay away.

She looked at her scarred friend pointedly. _I know what's going on and Ron's not so clueless that he won't, too, in a moment._

She kept her voice very low.

"Is it the mission?" She asked, giving him an alibi.

"Oh – Err – Yeah..," he started, glancing at Ron, to be sure he was buying it. "It's frustrating, because… Well, we weren't going to tell you, yet."

"We're still not telling her," interjected Ron.

He always knew just what to say to really warm her heart toward him.

"Right, Ron, I guess not," Harry conceded.

And just like that, her camaraderie with Harry was, for the moment, ruined. She wasn't sure if it was simply lack of sleep, or a combination of that and having no more patience left to spare after her evening with Malfoy, but she found that she was suddenly in want of a new locale.

"Fine, then. I'm going to the library… I wouldn't want to get in the way of your progress."

She gathered her books quickly and swept out of the dormitory before they'd have the chance to stop her.

She did go to the library, but it was not to continue with her schoolwork. Though it was her second time to the library this term, it was the first time she crossed paths with Madam Pince. She gave the yippy library guard dog her customary nod; they had come to an unspoken agreement, she and Madam Pince. The librarian would let her read and do whatever she wanted without so much as a dirty look and Hermione would refrain from telling anyone about a little incident that had occurred back in fourth year…

_It was late one Friday night, about ten minutes to close. Hermione was reading quietly in one of her favourite alcoves, which she had chosen for its unsurpassed capability of keeping its inhabitants hidden from sight. If Madam Pince didn't notice her sitting there, she'd get away with just staying inside instead of having to make a show of leaving only to sneak back in later. _

_She was intently reading from _Advanced Potion-Making_, though it wasn't required until 6__th__ year, in preparation for an upcoming exam, when she heard a sound that was completely unfamiliar to her. _

_She listened closely as a female voice rose in laughter – but it was impossible that any student would make that kind of noise in the library at this time of night, and the only other person she'd seen here had been the librarian herself… but that was impossible wasn't it? _

_She continued to listen, trying to place the voice, and her eyebrows rose in shock as she accepted the undeniable truth. It was impossible! Madam Pince was giggling! She tried to listen more closely, and she barely made out the quieter male voice that had brought such merriness – but whose could it be? _

_Being best friend to Harry Potter and Ron Weasley came with some consequences. One of them was an inability to let this sort of mystery pass her by; another was the skill set to investigate it. _

_So she crawled on her hands and knees under her study table until she could just see out of her alcove. She saw only a pair of dirty boots semi-covered by dingy black robes – she needed a closer look to identify the person wearing them. She crawled slowly out from under the table, into the main library. _

_Just then, Mrs. Norris ran into her line of vision. She'd seen her! The cat gave her a patented dirty look and hissed, and Hermione tried her best to scramble back into her alcove and hide, but she was too late. Madam Pince stalked right to her, Filch close on her heels._

_The woman glared at her with her pinched face and said, after a pause, "You know, Miss Granger, I do not allow big-mouthed, nosy brats to handle my books under any circumstances. Do you understand me?" _

And Hermione had. She never told anyone, not even Harry and Ron, that she had seen the librarian and the caretaker together that day. She valued the library too much to jeopardize her right to it for such a petty thing as gossip, and she'd had unparalleled access to it ever since.

* * *

Hermione was lugging the most extensive book on healing that she could find up to the top of the tower.

She'd thought that the walk had been long and hard yesterday, but it had been nothing. She hadn't known what awaited her. Now, her dark trek was absolutely interminable, the steps rising ahead of her in an endless stream of coils stacked atop one another.

No, she thought when she got to the top of the steps. It wasn't interminable. The walk was much too short.

She came awkwardly upon the door which separated her world from his- hers containing an entire universe and his a mere few square feet surrounded by walls and locked doors that seemed to hover over everything else.

It was a prison in the sky, and she was the guard. Gods help her.

She wasn't sure if she should knock first or just let herself in – she didn't want to pretend that Malfoy actually had a choice in the matter, for they both knew that was untrue, but she didn't want to catch him by surprise either… she shuddered at the image that came to mind at the thought. No, catching him by surprise was not an option.

She settled for rapping on the door thrice in succession and entering without waiting for a response, shouldering the heavy healing text under her left arm and scanning the room awkwardly.

He was sitting on the floor next to a record cabinet, leafing through the cardboard sleeves with an expression of distaste. He didn't even glance at her as she entered the room.

"Well it's about time," he said, flipping to the back of an album cover to finish his examination of it.

"… What?"

Hermione had been sure that she was in for a fight today, that he'd pounce on her the moment she entered his room, demanding to know why he was at Hogwarts and who she was in contact with about him. She'd been so utterly convinced of this that his current attitude stunned her, and now she didn't know what to make of him at all.

He finally met her confused gaze and smirked evilly as he put the record sleeve into the cabinet.

"I've been waiting for you. All day."

Her anxiety rose dramatically as she frantically wondered what trap he'd laid out for her. It was the only explanation she could think of for his bright demeanor.

"I need more antibiotics for this infection," he continued as if he had not just implied a threat, "It's been bothering me since this morning. And I'm sure that whatever is going on around here, you wouldn't want me to die of this infection, because if you did, I'd probably already be dead."

So he was just going to accept the situation as it was, no questions asked? At the very least that was how he wanted it to look, but accepting his complacency as truth would be as unnatural as swallowing rocks to Hermione, so she remained wary.

"And so now you want my help?" she asked.

"Well, obviously, Granger. I'm not an idiot, you know, and I do value my life even if no one else does."

She took a deep breath. _Be nice. You want him to trust you… _

"Alright. I'll help you, but I have some conditions."

"Of course you do," he replied, the nastiness in his tone just barely evident. She chose to ignore the contempt that he'd obviously tried to hide.

"I won't have you attacking me again, physically or verbally. I'm here to help you."

"And why – "

"I won't be answering any questions about who I have contact with or why I am doing this. In fact, I won't feel obligated to answer any questions at all."

He glared at her.

"And lastly, if I'm going to help you recover, you're going to have to do things my way. You're going to tell me what happened to you so I can figure out how you might have gotten that infection in the first place, and you're going to let me examine you without putting up a fight."

He looked up at her from his place on the floor as if he were actually considering her conditions. Though he seemed utterly disgusted by the idea, he threw no fit, he shot no insults her way – it was as if an age had passed since she had woken in his room this morning and she had to wonder: what had happened since then?

But she knew that it didn't matter. If he were evolving some evil plan that involved being agreeable toward her, she didn't care. She still had a wand while he was helpless, and she had to admit that she was a good enough witch to handle anything he could throw at her; tall and lean-muscled as he may be once he regained his strength.

"Just as long as you agree not to touch me more than is absolutely necessary. I know how difficult it might be for you to keep your hands to yourself, but I wouldn't want to have to scrub myself raw just because you couldn't resist…"

She expected a conceited smirk or some indication that his request was purposefully ridiculous, but none came. He returned her look head-on, his one-eyed glare meeting her honeyed one.

"I'm not even going to respond to that," she replied.

"You just did."

"Alright, Malfoy, this whole conversation is absurd. Just come over here and sit in this desk chair so that I can take a look at your infection."

"Fine," he said flippantly, but instead of immediately complying with her request, he reached back into the record cabinet and pulled out an unrecognizable black sleeve. He pulled the record out and, with a surprising deftness, placed it onto the player and set the needle to it.

Hermione was as shocked to learn that he would ever use a record player as she was to hear the music selection. The unmistakable sounds of 1970's metal filled the room and she was soon able to identify the voice of Ozzy Osbourne emanating from the speakers.

_Well_, she supposed,_ I should have guessed he would be a Black Sabbath fan_.

And even stranger was the song… _War Pigs_? It simply wasn't possible that he had any idea what that song was about. That was the only explanation.

And though Hermione didn't particularly care for Black Sabbath much - or any heavy metal, for that matter – she did her best to maintain a placid expression and keep her opinions to herself. She was, after all, trying her best to play nice.

He came to the desk and sat in the chair obediently, to her shock, and waited for what was to come. He seemed to pick a spot on the wall across from himself to focus on so that he wouldn't have to acknowledge her, which was just fine as far as she was concerned.

Hermione opened the gargantuan healing text to the section on dark infections and placed it on the desk for easy reference. The moving photos of various infected body parts oozed assorted colors of slimy mucus and burst open as she prepared to examine Malfoy.

"Ok, I'm going to just, err…" she hesitated. "Will you take the patch off for me? Please?"

He graced her with a quasi eyeroll that she didn't understand – she'd said "please" - and reached up to remove the patch.

His wound was fairly similar to the night before but less severe. Black pus still seeped from it but it wasn't caked on quite so heavily, and it was still red and swollen but not the garish shade it had been.

Still, it was the most horrible injury she'd ever seen up close and she couldn't prevent the small, horrified sound that escaped her lips when the patch had been removed.

Luckily, he ignored it.

Next she knew that she'd have to clean the wound. She wetted a rag with hot water from a basin that she'd conjured and moved to raise it toward his face.

"This might sting a bit," she warned, and started dabbing gingerly at the inflamed skin. On contact, his whole body started squirming away from her.

"IT HURTS!" he yelled at her. "STOP IT!"

She withdrew from him.

"Gods, Malfoy, don't be such a child. It wouldn't hurt so much if you were a little more cooperative."

"I could be a little more cooperative, _Granger_, if you were a little less rough."

"I'm not being… no, I won't argue with you. If you want my help, you'll sit quietly while I do what needs to be done. Otherwise I'll just leave."

In answer, he merely took a breath, set his lips in a hard line, and resumed staring at some anonymous spot on the wall.

"Now, like I said, this will hurt, but it needs to be cleaned. Then I'll be able to get a better look at what's going on."

As she dabbed and rubbed at his black-crusted eye socket with the rough cloth, it was clear that Malfoy was in significant pain. He held his breath, presumably to keep from crying out, and when he did inhale it was weak and shuddering.

Her mind couldn't help being recalled to the night before. He had been so helpless and agonized, yelling and muttering to himself with the abandon of a person who had lost control weeks past. What was the name he'd called her? Ella? But it was no use remembering now, or quite possibly ever, for she knew better than to ever bring it up. Things were bad enough between them without her probing for personal information.

Not that she truly cared. It was a curiosity - a piece of the puzzle that was Draco Malfoy that she hadn't yet begun to put together.

But in the back of her mind, she noted that probing for his personal information was exactly her goal, and she felt as hopeless as ever.

As quickly as she could manage, she finished the task and set herself to examining the wound more closely, using the healing text as a guide. As she'd suspected, the area closely resembled the pictures of dark curse victims, raising the _Exacto ocularis_ curse to the top of her differentials.

Unfortunately, the stronger her evidence became, the more she needed to know about what had happened to find an appropriate treatment. Questioning Draco Malfoy about anything at all, especially if you're Hermione Granger, was no easy task.

_Nice. Just keep being nice_, she commanded herself, and faced her dreaded opponent.

* * *

Playing nice with Granger was harder than he'd thought it would be. She'd waltzed into his room – without even waiting for his response to her knock – and immediately started demanding things from him in that snotty tone she loved too well.

And while the look of shock on her face at his compliance had appeased him for a little while, he was strongly feeling the need to lash out at her again, and soon.

While she'd been cleaning his socket, he had poured all his attention to listening to the record, which had also earned him satisfyingly shocked expression from the witch. The pain was so bad that he felt himself breaking into a light sweat as he sat there, but he wouldn't cry out again – not after she'd had the nerve to call him a baby. She had no idea what real pain was. She couldn't possibly understand.

He thanked the gods for Black Sabbath and for the moment of hopeless boredom that had forced him to experiment with the muggle record player earlier that day. It was amazing what lows a person might fall to in desperation. But barbaric as it was, the contraption somehow managed to play music, and he was simply grateful to have another activity to fill his days here, which he was beginning to fear might be many.

The harpy had finished with his face, no doubt relishing in every flinch of pain she'd inflicted, and started to examine the huge textbook that she'd brought with her.

As if coming to a conclusion, she looked up resignedly at him and, if the look on her face meant anything at all, was readying herself for battle.

_Nice, but not too nice_, he reminded himself. _Manipulate her without raising too much suspicion._

He met her gaze without smiling but without much anger either. He thought it was a good compromise.

"I have an idea about what might have happened, but I need to find out some more information from you before I can know for sure."

She looked for any dissention on his part, and he did his best to show none. Answering her questions to some degree was a compromise he knew he'd have to make, but in truth, he wasn't exactly sure what had happened to his eye. His memories of that night ended long before his eye had gone.

"So, looking at the wound, I can see moderate inflammation all around the empty socket, which seems to have filled with purulent material. Based on the pus that oozes from the area between your eyelids, I'd say it is all this thick, black substance."

She apparently always had to go into lecture-mode, no matter the situation. He figured he'd just have to endure it until it was over.

"I compared my observations to the pictures in this textbook of dark infections. Clearly, your wound most closely resembles that seen in this picture, here," she said as she shoved the textbook in his face and gestured to a photographed infection that was, indeed, remarkably similar to his own.

He just nodded dumbly and waited for her to continue.

"The picture is an example of an infection caused by a dark curse."

Still, he gave no verbal response to her statement despite how she seemed to wait for it.

She sighed, seemingly losing patience, and delivered the final blow:

"Malfoy, did someone curse you with _Exacto ocularis_?

And just like that, it all came flooding back to him. His father, standing over him as he lay on the floor of the dungeon, only semi-conscious. Lucius cursed him – he heard it – and his head exploded with pain. It was more pain than he could take, and he screamed, but it was in his mind, and he was trapped there. The phantom pain had only begun to recede when he saw Ella. She was screaming, too, and it was his fault. It was all his fault.

He fought his way out of this virtual hell of his own mind's creation. He had to fight with all the strength he had left, but he broke through and became aware, again, of where he really was and what he was really doing.

He had folded himself into a ball that sat atop his chair, and he was shaking. He was afraid that he had cried out during the flashback, but the Granger girl looked utterly dumbfounded, so he likely hadn't said anything at all.

He allowed himself to sit in his fetal position for a few moments longer, to give his body a chance to relax. He would deal with the girl after.

"Are you alright?" she asked in a hushed, frightened sort of tone, and he felt her hand hesitantly brush against his forearm, like she was trying to physically draw him back to reality.

But the merest touch felt like she was swinging an anvil into his arm and he jolted away from her.

"Don't – touch me!"

"I think you need – "

"I don't need anything from you. I need you to leave. Now."

She looked confused and perhaps, just the slightest bit, hurt.

_Hurt? Like I should care if _she's_ hurt!_

But it wasn't his concern just now. Though he needed her help and didn't want to put her off, he needed time to process the thoughts and images that kept running through his mind of his father, of Ella, even of Dumbledore. He felt the familiar tightening of his throat that warned him that he was going to cry soon, and he'd be damned if she saw that. He couldn't take it.

Still, she'd made no move to leave. It looked like she was trying to figure out exactly what to do, but complying with his request didn't seem to be at the top of her list.

_Nice. Play nice._ It was becoming like his soothing mantra.

Desperate times called for desperate measures, indeed.

"… Please," he implored her through his voice and his gaze.

Their eyes locked for the briefest of moments, and she nodded. She took a small tube out of her satchel and placed it onto the desk where he could see it and left without even stopping to pack her textbook.

And when he was finally alone, he let the tears flow, ugly and raw. They were for his disfigured face, for the death of an innocent child, and even for the father whom he held responsible for both.

He was nothing, had nothing except for Hermione Granger, and that alone was fuel enough to keep his despair burning through the night.


	8. Progress and Snark

**A/N: It's been awhile since I updated**

**I don't own Harry!**

**Special thanks to me beta, likeabear, for being great and policing my abuse of the semicolon**

* * *

**Chapter 8: Progress and Snark**

Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven. – Mark Twain

Hermione was having a rough string of days. Aside from the prefect meeting, which had been the complete disaster that anyone at all could have predicted, she found that Harry and Ron were continuing to exclude her despite her most earnest attempts to convince them that she was emotionally recovering. In fact, it seemed as if the more she tried to persuade them, the more they resisted.

She supposed she could understand the logic behind their reaction, but that didn't make it any easier for her to deal with. She found herself resenting them especially over the few days following her second encounter with Malfoy, for when she went to them for a simple conversation about the Order, something to distract her from the terrible things she'd seen, she had been refused.

The look on her charge's face when she'd named the curse that had undoubtedly caused his disfigurement still haunted her.

She'd recalled him, pale and broken, the moment Pansy Parkinson had called her a "filthy mudblood" just under her breath at the prefect meeting as she was reading off Hermione's duties. (Incidentally, said duties had essentially amounted to nothing at all. The Hufflepuff prefects had been given double the workload to pick up the slack, but the same sentence was given to all of the Gryffindor prefects; they were so only in name.)

His image had flashed forward from the recesses of her mind when Harry and Ron shared furtive glances and excused themselves from her presence in the Gryffindor common room, citing the need for extra sleep in preparation for Quidditch tryouts.

She'd been stalked by it at night, always hovering in the periphery of her mind's eye, when she felt the most destitute of familiars; she had not even a ginger tomcat left of her family to fill the lonely void left by those lost or strangely distant from her.

Hermione had returned to the Tower once in the ensuing handful of days to bring him a stockpile of antibiotic potions that might be able to hold the infection at bay, at least for a little while. On that occasion, Malfoy had seemed to accept her presence resignedly, as if he could not muster the energy for anything else.

_She heard a scramble from behind the door as she knocked and let herself in, but when she entered he was sitting up rigidly on his bed, reading a book._

"_Are you alright?" she asked._

_He said nothing._

"_I brought you these medicinal potions. Take one vial per day. Before they run out, I'll come to bring you more." _

_He didn't respond._

"_Do you need anything else?"_

"_No." _

_She hesitated at the door, glancing at him and his room before leaving somewhat reluctantly. The tube of antibiotic ointment remained, unopened, on his desk. _

And that had been it. He'd spoken not even two words to her throughout the exchange, and she had never once caught a glimpse of his face. His neck hunched over the book in his hands, his eye downcast, and his whole countenance had remained shadowed from her.

He needed something, be it words or something more tangible, but she could never be the person to give it to him. Unfathomably, that knowledge made her feel even more isolated than she had before. Who in the world was more isolated than Draco Malfoy? She couldn't even connect with _him_.

_That's because he's a hateful bigot_, she reminded herself, _and don't you forget it just because you feel some strange blend of pity and kinship for his present state. _

So she continued on. After finally diagnosing the cause of his malignant infection, she had been able to make some strides in her research of possible treatments. The only problem she faced now was the absence of the most likely antibiotic candidate in Madam Pomphrey's stores.

Thus it had become time, once again, for some illicit potion brewing. Nothing could have possibly brightened her mood more than the prospect of putting her many hours of alone time to good use, especially when said use involved knives, ingredients that would be difficult to procure, and a hint of danger.

* * *

Draco didn't remember much from the past few days. Following Hermione's discovery, he had entered a state of emotional blackout from which he was having trouble emerging, and though he could not be exactly certain of what had happened in the ensuing days, he could remember her coming by to deliver potions. He could hear her small, frightened voice asking if he was all right. It made him angry. Then being angry made him angrier, and he thought he'd rather die and rot away in here as long as he'd never have to see her again, and he struggled to figure out what it all meant but it was useless.

He was able to conclude, with certainty, one thing: Emma Woodhouse didn't deserve Mr. Knightley at all. The whole idea of him condescending to marry her was completely ridiculous.

He could only hope that the rest of the Austen woman's books would be less insipid, but how much should be expected from muggle literature, really?

At the very least, _Pride and Prejudice_ would offer a welcome respite from the text that he'd been tempted by sick curiosity into reading earlier, only to sincerely regret it as his readings had pointed out, in very plain terms, just now dire his infection could become if not treated properly.

He just hoped that Granger would be able to figure something out, though he couldn't muster much faith. He'd never really seen proof of any true intellectuality in her, and she had forgotten twice now to bring the healing text that she undoubtedly owed the library with her when she left his rooms. Madam Pince would give her the tongue-lashing of the century and forbid her for stepping foot into the library again for that, and then where would they be?

Much as he hated to admit it, however, his socket had improved in the last few days. It had gone from a nearly constant throbbing pain to an intermittent one. The agony only kept him up half the previous night instead of all through it. The heat that rolled off of his face in waves had lessened from that of a raging inferno to that of an extensive but contained bonfire.

Even so, he'd have to be dim not to realize that the improvement only slowed his unerring progress toward a painful and possibly crazed sort of death- the kind that one got when an infection took the short road from the eye socket through the optic nerve and into the brain.

And whom would he have to endure in that state? Hermione _bloody_ Granger. Just as she had been there through the horrific flashback a few days back – hell, she'd caused it - she would be the one to observe him and try to nurse him to health as he was robbed of his faculties one by one. The question remained: why? Why would a muggle-born Gryffindor, 1/3 of the Golden Trio itself, be interested in helping him, a pureblood Slytherin Death Eater who could be counted upon to hate her blindly, and had done so for years running?

He did not believe in altruism. He had learned from birth to reject it and his life thus far had provided no significant evidence to the contrary, so ridiculous notions of Granger's overlarge heart and abhorrence of suffering of any kind, even his, were out of the question. He would find her reason for doing this, who had let her in on the secret of Draco Malfoy's prison in the sky, and he would seize back control of his life. He could only hope that her informant and his cloaked captor were one in the same, for maybe then he would feel justified in taking some revenge.

He expected that Granger would prove herself to be a worthy opponent. Though she was probably not as cunning as she was reputed to be, his interaction with her had demonstrated that she would not be easily manipulated. She studied him so closely whenever they spoke that he felt each time like she were seeing _into_ him, finding his response before he was even aware of it himself. It was a queer, violating sort of way she had about her, as if the one she was conversing with were an arithmancy problem that she was trying to solve. He could not tell whether her single-minded concentration on his every move was because she was suspicious of him or whether she was just like that, with everyone, all of the time.

He suspected the latter. It was a marvel that anyone at all could stand to be around her – even Potter and the Weasel, though to think so may be giving them too much credit. They were likely incapable of even noticing the intense focus that she constantly maintained, brandishing her mind like a rapier to protect herself from the universe and everyone in it.

Yet she was all he had – at least, she was the only living thing that he had. Though his quarters were filled with records to listen to and books to read, he had reached that point in solitude and inactivity that always seemed to occur after a generous measure of time, as if boredom felt that its end was nigh and was thus desperate to prolong itself, where he began to find it difficult to get out of bed at all. He would glance at the record player and wish that it was doing something - not necessarily something interesting, but something at all – though he'd be unwilling to walk to it and experiment with it himself.

He wasn't sure what he would do with himself when _Emma_ was done; maybe he would find that it was time for a nap. Or perhaps he would step into the shower to take care of his personal hygiene, and once in there, he could endeavor to find the inspiration necessary to take care of his other, more intimate needs.

So it was that he found himself standing under the chrome showerhead, hot water beating down on his bare back. He'd tried not to notice as he got in how his body had wasted, how his backbone and ribs protruded grossly under his pasty, stretched skin. But it proved to be a feat of willful ignorance that he was incapable of that afternoon.

Thus, inspiration for his neglected libido was hard to find. He grasped at memories of Daphne Greengrass's perfectly rounded tits, cupped delicately in the palms of his hands, but the old faithful image had grown flimsy, falling apart in fragile wisps each time he tried to force it to stick in his mind. It had been too long.

He'd have given up at the first sign of difficulty, in fact, had it not been so long. Now, however, his pride would not allow it. His body had once been constantly at the ready as only a teenaged male's can be, somehow finding cause to stand at attention in any circumstance. It sometimes even got to the point where he found himself praying ardently to remain at ease, just through that class's charms exercise…

Draco sighed in frustration and self-pity and tried to conjure the moving images from the stash of pictures that he had once found under his parents' bed as a child. When he'd recalled, however, the full implications of their being under his parents' bed, he felt only disgust. And with that train of thought he was back at frustration.

In the back of his mind, he knew with a dull certainty that there was only one woman whom he'd seen recently enough for his imagination to clearly invoke while all other beautiful faces, firm bottoms, and perky breasts had fallen inexorably into obscurity. With just the fleeting thought of her, an image was conjured by his mind before he'd been able to halt it, as if acknowledging the storm had opened the floodgates. He felt his blood heat and his pulse quicken as her firm body was slowly revealed to him, all but for that which was covered by russet curls, hanging well past her shoulders, brushing against…

No! He couldn't allow himself to continue this way. Not _her_. He would take celibacy over that, no matter how his deprived, hormone-ridden body responded to her proximity. Let his subconscious conjure what it will, he allowed bleakly, but he would not act on it. He would not lower himself to fantasize about the likes of Hermione Granger.

Giving up, he turned the water temperature down and set both hands against the shower wall ahead of him so that he could bow his head to the floor and hold himself up. For many minutes, he stood there. He remained until goosebumps pimpled his skin and his already weak body was shivering, but no matter how he chilled his blood or cleaned his body, his mind was tainted, and he hated her all the more for it.

He needed to get away from here.

So it was with these thoughts that Draco roused from the nearly catatonic state that Hermione's revelation had brought about. When she inevitably returned, he'd be waiting.

* * *

Hermione had found that nicking the ingredients for her infection-fighting draught ("for the treatment of powerful infiltrative dark curses and their spread") from the students' potions closet was easy, but for the Cat's Claw. For that she would have to find her way into Slughorn's personal collection, which she hoped might be easier, not to mention less terrifying, than stealing from Snape. She might just have to hone her sweet-talking skills, the set of which she never could develop as much as she wished.

In fact, as things currently stood, she might find it easier to con the headmaster. Snape had entered his position of power to the horror and dread of at least three-quarters of the student body. He had murdered Dumbledore, and though that fact wasn't common knowledge, the wizarding community had caught on to suspicion that his loyalty was not wholly engaged with the light. But so far, in spite of all the terrible things Hermione had imagined – that he would abuse the students, force them to learn the dark arts, even that he would try to murder Harry in his sleep – she had seen hardly hair or hide of him since the start of term. He left the professors to their subjects, to the punishing of their own students, and to the patrolling of Hogwarts' halls. He showed up in the Great Hall for dinner, as he seemed obligated to do, but his meals were brief and sparse, and Hermione couldn't help but notice, though she avoided looking at him at all in a vain attempt at not drawing attention to herself, that he seemed even more miserable than usual. His eyes were like dark coals that the fire had completely gone out of, his skin like aged paper stretched over a gaunt, bony face that she could hardly recognize.

It reminded her of Draco.

She took up the mortar and pestle that she had been using to pound ingredients for her potion and resumed the monotonous task of creating a fine powder. The rhythm of the hard work soothed her; she tried to drown thoughts of Malfoy in the regular noise of her own grinding. She'd invested enough brainpower in her blond charge already that day, and she was obliged to invest even more later when she went to check that he was still among the living.

Her mind wandered, as it had so often recently, to her friends. She felt exhausted by it all and wasn't sure if she had it in her to keep trying to involve herself in their lives. Any attempts at conversation about non-Order business fell flat and empty; though they'd been friends before the Order even existed, talk of anything else seemed dreadfully unimportant. They had become distanced to the kind of acquaintances who could ask how she was doing at any given moment and always receive the same answer and without them, her life was devoid of anyone to tell about how she was actually doing.

* * *

She had been prepared for Malfoy's silence, the way he would stare straight ahead of him seeming not to notice that she was there at all, and the single word responses that he would sometimes make the effort to grace her with.

It was not what she found when she finally made her way up the steps that evening. The record player was spinning, every light in the room was on – including the lava lamp – and Malfoy sat, fully clothed, reading. He looked up at her when she opened the door, placing his book to the side.

An awkward silence followed as they stared at each other, she with nothing at all prepared to say to him. There was no opening line in her head that seemed appropriate, but she had to fill her mouth with something or she'd keep gaping at him with her jaws open like a fish.

She recovered a bit from her shock when she noticed the side of his mouth curl up at her in something that might be termed a half-smile in anyone else, but on him could only be a smirk.

She felt her English upbringing kick in and could hardly stop herself as the next statement flew from her mouth reflexively:

"Good evening. Funny weather we've been having."

And immediately she wanted to smack her hand against her forehead.

"I wouldn't know. I haven't been outside in months."

"Well. It's - err…" She paused. She wasn't getting anywhere at all. "You seem better today."

"Yes."

"I, um, came to look at your wound and see how it's healing."

"I figured."

He was smirking again. Was there a secret joke going on that only he was aware of? Or was the joke simply her? She bristled a bit, her tolerance for other people already dangerously low.

"Well if you don't need me to I can just be on my way," she said sharply, turning to leave with exaggerated roughness. _Screw nice for today_, she thought, _I'm not in the mood anymore._

"Leaving already? What is wrong with you today, Granger? You're not your usual chipper, helpful, annoying self."

She stopped mid-turn and shot him a look that combined all the loneliness and hurt that she'd been feeling recently and laid it on him.

"Screw you, Malfoy."

She put her hand on the knob, her only thoughts on making it back to her room before she started sobbing. She was such a failure at everything.

"Whoa, whoa," he said quickly, halting her where she stood. "I need your help. Come over here and look at the damn thing."

And that steadfast sense of obligation and responsibility tugged her back into the room and closer to him. She was so easily manipulated.

"Fine. Can you just _try_ to be kind to me today, though? I've had enough."

She didn't specify of what. He could wonder what she meant. He probably wouldn't.

"Well here I thought I was _being_ kind. Or did you not notice?"

"Laughing at people is not generally regarded as being kind."

"Ah, I see. You're hallucinating. There's nothing to be done about that, I'm afraid…"

"You were smirking at me. You know, I don't need this; it will serve you well to remember that. I don't need you to come out of this alive – in fact, I couldn't care any less about what happens to you. _You_ need _me_."

Briefly – very briefly – she saw his face fall, but the mask of casual complacence returned so firmly that she questioned whether it had ever left.

"Don't be ridiculous. I've never smirked in my life."

She paused, and stared at him from across the room, eyebrow raised in annoyed disbelief.

After a moment, he broke the silence, asking with exaggerated casualness: "Funny weather we've been having, wouldn't you say, Granger?"

To her shock and his apparent dismay, she did the unthinkable.

She laughed. It wasn't the kind of laughter that required her to throw her head back or take any deep breaths to facilitate loud chuckles. It wasn't even the kind of laughter that set off any happy chemicals in her brain – not any that she could feel, anyway.

It was the quiet kind of laughter that was accompanied by minute movement of the shoulders and small, breathy sounds escaping her lips. The feeling was so foreign to her by now that she quickly covered her mouth with her hand to hide her smile, embarrassed.

She was officially going insane. She needed to compose herself; she was on enemy territory, for gods' sake!

Paul McCartney started singing Penny Lane just as she took a step toward him and she had to fight the urge to smile again, damn him. She couldn't justify it to herself, but she imagined that he'd played a Beatles record just to mess with her.

"So, how have you been feeling?" she asked, completely composed.

"Better."

"How so? Have you been feeling less feverish? Is the pain at all receded? Has it spread?"

"Yes. Yes. No. Anything else?"

She blinked at him.

"Um, I think I should take a look at it. You know, I haven't gotten a good look at it since… Well, it's been a few days."

"Fine," he said heavily, and gingerly took the patch off. He closed his remaining eye and waited for her to come to him, his whole body stiffening in anticipation of the pain that she inflicted every time she did this.

She was gently feeling the reddened surrounding areas for excessive heat when he spoke up.

"Any progress on finding a cure for this?"

He must have felt her surprise and hesitation at his question, for he certainly couldn't see it; his right eye was scrunched tightly closed in a wince of pain.

"Come on, Granger. I'm not an idiot, even if I'm not quite up to _your_ standard. It's getting better, but not that much better. Plus you left that healing text here. I took advantage of the opportunity to… educate myself."

So he must know, now, how dire his situation really was.

"Well, I found a likely candidate potion, but I have to brew it myself. I'm working on preparing and procuring all of the ingredients right now, and the potion itself will take a few weeks to brew. It's quite complicated."

"How long?" He sounded sort of bleak.

"Three weeks, maybe a month altogether."

He paused to take a deep breath and hold it tightly while she cleaned the wound itself with a conjured cloth.

"How long do I have?" he asked quietly.

"Long enough," she responded.

"How long?" He repeated, his voice insistent.

"Six weeks, I think. Maybe a little less."

His grey eye opened and locked on her own dirty brown orbs and she felt his sadness. She may hate him, she may be able to tell him that she couldn't care less about what happened to him and mean it for a moment, but that didn't make it possible not to feel despair for him when she was telling him that he might have six weeks to live.

They sat through the rest of her exam in mutual silence. She needed to get away from him as quickly as possible, for the torrent of emotions she'd felt that day had been too much for her to process and she was left feeling exhausted and vulnerable, stripped of all Malfoy-resistant layers.

"I'll be back tomorrow," she told him, and she left. He didn't respond, not even with a nod of his head to show he'd heard her. There was nothing else for him to say.


	9. No More Than a Boy in the Company of

**A/N: Currently on break, so I was able to write a little! Maybe I'll get another chappie out before I have to start clinics (EEEK!)**

I don't own Harry Potter etc etc.

* * *

Chapter 9: No More Than a Boy in the Company of Strangers

"There are no pleasures in a fight but some of my fights have been a pleasure to win." Muhammad Ali

* * *

Hermione walked briskly up to the door to Horace Slughorn's office and knocked on the with a confidence she didn't quite feel. She had only the barest sketch of a plan of action in her mind – one couldn't go wrong with name-dropping when it came to Slughorn – but she had purposefully left room for improvisation. She hoped, perhaps vainly, that this would reduce the chance of her request seeming suspicious.

He answered the door in the somewhat frazzled and overwhelmed manner that he usually maintained, but seeing as how classes had just recently ended, she couldn't imagine that the timing could be too inconvenient.

"Ah – Miss Granger," he started as he poked his head through the door, "it's you. Do come in."

He was being quite cautious, but she thought it reasonable under the circumstances.

She walked in and seated herself awkwardly in front of his desk while he re-maneuvered himself to sit behind it, magically locking them in – or, more importantly, others out – as he did so.

"I'm sorry to bother you like this, sir – "

"Oh it is never a bother to see one of my favourite students! Especially one who shows such promise!"

Hermione had the grace to blush very slightly and appear very flattered while she murmured a demure "thank you."

"So what can I do for you?"

"Well, professor, I came here to ask you if you might give me a potion ingredient that I'm having a hard time finding. It's not very exotic or anything, just a little cat's claw."

"Oh, I didn't know that you were working on an independent project in potions. Is this something the Headmaster has you doing?"

His voice tellingly quivered a little with his reference to Snape. It was no secret that Slughorn could be rather cowardly when it came to dark wizards, or conflict of any kind for that matter. Consequently, the next part of this conversation would be the trickiest and most vital to her current errand.

"No, it isn't. This is just a little project that I started on my own. I can assure you that it's not dangerous, and I've taken all the necessary precautions – I've researched the potion extensively, and all the possible toxicities associated with all the ingredients, and the proper safety measures that need to be taken during each step – "

Slughorn cut off her incessant nervous rambling with a plastered-on look that gave every appearance of his sincerest regret. She knew that she had to change tactics that very moment, or she'd have to resort to stealing. Again.

It was time to pull out her heavy ammunition. She just wasn't sure she'd be strong enough to wield it properly.

"- And Harry and I will both be _very_ grateful. You might even be a - a hero."

And as hard as that last part was for her to swallow, he seemed to buy it completely. His eyes clouded over the way hers would when she had tried, back in fifth year, to imagine getting an "Outstanding," on all of her OWLs in some strange test preparation strategy that was supposed to help lower her anxiety. Of course, it hadn't worked for her at the time, but the feeling was working its magic on Slughorn right now, she was sure of it.

She tried to look hopeful and innocent while he clearly weighed the danger of being involved in such a task against the various personal benefits he could hope to glean.

Finally, he looked at her with a slight indulgent smile.

"Well in that case, Miss Granger, I think it's important that you start working on an independent enrichment potions project under my tutelage. You might attempt brewing an advanced immunity-boosting serum called Lymphencourage. I'm sure you'll find that cat's claw is one of its key ingredients. Naturally, you can come to me for any ingredients or materials you need to support this project, which will supplement your preparations for NEWTs in the spring. Wouldn't want my best student getting any less than an Outstanding!"

"Thank you, professor! Thank you!" she replied, excited and relieved.

He briefly excused himself to get the cat's claw for her from his stores and then handed it to her, but when she turned to go, he called after her:

"And don't forget my little gathering next week, Miss Granger! I'll expect to see both you and Mr. Potter there!"

_Well_, she thought resignedly as she walked up the stairs from the dungeons, _everything has its price_.

* * *

Draco was experiencing his usual amount of trouble getting out of bed. It was a struggle that he fought through every morning – or what functioned as the morning for him anyway – where he spent as much time as he could staring at the ceiling, wishing: that he could sleep until it was time for him to leave this place; that he might live until Christmas, and if so, that he might be able to keep himself from murdering Granger in the process; that he might, on second thought, just get the dying process over with right now and be saved from the inevitable grief of living and the constant pain that currently plagued him.

He wished he were dead so often these past few months that he thought it was almost a shame that he hadn't the guts to take care of it himself, but he now knew he wouldn't have to. He'd be dead in a few weeks anyway, and the pain associated with the disease process seemed due punishment for his cowardice.

After he got up to relieve his bladder, he took the various potions she'd brought to him, hoping they might work quickly and the painful throbbing might abate soon. His only thought, as he pulled the covers back over his head to shut himself away, was to hope that it might be evening when he woke again, so that another day could pass without his having to have any knowledge of it at all.

He was not so lucky. It was, he ventured to guess, about 3 pm when he was compelled by his neglected body to get up and stretch his legs and try to force down some food. And what a shame it was to be up and about so early; if precedence was meaningful at all, _she_ wouldn't even be there until after dinner.

So he found himself, after another frustratingly uneventful shower, wandering back and forth across his chambers with pent-up energy and looking for something to do. He started randomly searching all the nooks and crannies of the room that he'd looked through multiple times before, opening drawers in his dresser that were completely empty (the house elves provided only a few sets of robes at a time, which he usually left folded on the floor untouched), taking random books off the shelf and leafing through them as if some secret note would fall out, and opening the small drawers in the old-fashioned desk carefully. He found the various trays and compartments that these types of desks were known for, and he pulled every drawer out completely so he could find any paper that might have fallen beneath them in that irritating way papers had.

But when he pulled the drawer out from the top left corner, something caught his eye that seemed out of place. He thought he glimpsed a piece of brass just like the ones that made up the knobs and handles on the outside of the desk, but he wasn't exactly sure he had seen it at all, so he leaned in to get a closer look, pointing his good eye directly in the empty space that the drawer had occupied, a hole just bigger than his arm.

There was definitely something in there. It was already the most exciting thing to happen to him in weeks, and he didn't even know what it was yet. His heart started beating faster in anticipation of his discovery; he got a sense, somehow, that this was going to be important, and he was excited to have something – anything other than his illness – to focus on when Granger wasn't around.

He reached his arm through the long and narrow empty space to grasp a small, cool knob with the tips of his fingers, and –

_Merlin's fucking beard. _

He couldn't reach far enough to actually grab it. Of course. He might've known had his depth perception not been so compromised. He began to think frantically of a way to solve his current hardship – did he have access to a piece of wire (why would he?)? Was there a piece of wood somewhere that he might be able to just jam in there in frustration (not that it would help anyway)? How did muggles survive without magic to help them solve such problems (certainly they were stuck in a primitive existence)?

A thought occurred to him and he tore to the empty closet, emerging victorious with a flimsy metal hanger which he then bended into a size that might actually fit through the drawer space. The effort was almost too much for his diseased body to handle, and he might not have been able to but for the adrenaline rush brought on by his excitement.

In the next moment, he was trying to aim the hook of the hanger at the brass knob, attempting to see his target through a long dark tunnel. Since he was no good at this, it was sudden and surprising when he felt the drawer slip toward him a moment later, and he quickly yanked it the rest of the way out and seized the contents with his waiting left hand.

And his heart stopped in his chest when he actually got a look at the thing he was holding, right before he threw it away from himself vigorously and it slid across the room.

_This can't be happening_, he thought, _no bloody way_.

For what he'd pulled out of the desk was a small leather-bound red book with the word "Journal" embossed in gold lettering across the top. Below that, inscribed by hand, was a name that he'd never actually heard before but that he understood well enough to instill a fear in him like he hadn't felt since the cloaked man:

_Merope Riddle._

And it taunted him, for though it was several feet away, he wasn't sure if he'd be able to bring himself to take even one step closer to it, let alone make it around to the other side of his chambers…

So much for peeing in a toilet. He supposed it was time to pick a corner.

* * *

"Hermoine! Hermione, wait!"

Harry was running after her as she walked toward the portal to Gryffindor common room. Briefly, she considered giving the password (Jabberwocky) and proceeding to the girls' dormitory as quickly as possible to avoid him, but she knew she would never get away with a move so blatant.

"Harry," she addressed him when he arrived at the Fat Lady.

"I can't believe I caught you – I feel like we haven't seen you in days!" said Harry, panting a little.

"Yes, I've been quite busy," she responded primly.

"Right. Ron said that he saw you earlier, coming up from the dungeons after classes were over – "

"Yeah, I had some work to do down there."

"Oh, erm… I just thought we'd agreed that it's dangerous for any of us to go down there, you know, alone."

"I can take care of myself."

She gave the password and they continued their conversation as the portrait opened and they stepped through into the empty common room.

"Aw, come on Hermione! Just because we aren't ready to include you on our missions yet doesn't mean you have to be like this."

And just then, as if drawn by some sixth sense she hadn't imagined he might possess (he certainly had never showed signs of extra intelligence before), Ron emerged from the stairs that led up to the boy's dorm. He shared a look with Harry.

"So, you're talking to her about going down to the dungeons alone?" he asked.

"Yeah, and she's not taking it so well."

"Excuse me!" she started, "_She_ is standing right in front of you." She waved her hands in front of their faces. "And _she _doesn't appreciate you talking about her as if she weren't here!"

Ron looked at her seriously. "We're just trying to make sure you're safe."

She'd had enough of them refusing to include her in order to protect her, making her feel lonely and isolated, and then seeming to think that they had any control over how she spent her days. They couldn't seem to care less until she'd been seen doing something naughty, but now all the sudden she was their business.

Well, she wasn't going to take it. No one oppressed Hermione Jean Granger.

"You two are being complete prats! You've made it absolutely clear that what you do with your time is none of my business, so now what I do with mine is none of yours. That's how friendship works."

"But we want to include you, we really do, it's just – " started Harry, but he trailed off, unable to complete his explanation of what exactly it "just" was.

Ron picked up where he left off. "It's just we got this letter, from an Order member, and – "

"Ron!" interrupted Harry, and he shot Ron a warning glare. Clearly, Ron was not meant to say anything further.

"Wait, you got a letter? And what did it say: 'Alienate Hermione Granger'? Because that's all that keeping things from me could accomplish. I should be helping. You two need me."

Harry answered: "We're really not supposed to talk about it," then glared at Ron again for good measure.

"Fine. If that's how it is…" she started, then pulled out her book bag and opened it, as if to start her schoolwork, effectively shutting them out completely.

"Hermione…" said Ron, sounding agonized, "I'm – we're – so sorry. We just want everything to go back to normal again, and for you not to shut us out."

He sat down next to her and put his hand hesitantly on her shoulder.

"Please… tell us how you're doing. You've been acting so strange lately."

She huffed derisively and continued pulling books out of her bag, ignoring his implied question, but he didn't speak again and seemed to have gone tense. When she looked towards him questioningly, his gaze had been distracted by something on the floor by her feet and a glance at Harry told her that he'd noticed whatever it was, too.

She followed Ron's line of vision to the vial of cat's claw that she'd just gotten from Slughorn. It must have fallen out of her bag as she'd been removing her books.

"What is that?" asked Harry, sounding slightly suspicious.

"Nothing," she replied, opening a book in her lap in a futile attempt to hide the reddening of her face.

Harry walked over to the couch, picked up the vial from the floor, examined it briefly, and handed it back to her.

"This looks like a potions ingredient. What is it? What's going on?"

"It's nothing. Just drop it."

"It's not nothing. Are you in some kind of trouble?"

"No, it's just a potions independent study project…"

"Slughorn doesn't do those," piped in Ron, much to Hermione's shock.

It must have shown on her face, because the next words from his mouth were in explanation:

"What? I overheard him say so to Malfoy last year after a potions class. I pay attention sometimes, you know, and he came right out and said that he doesn't advise students in independent projects."

Hermione reddened even further.

"Well, he agreed to advise me."

She could only hope that the haughty know-it-all tactic would work, though she hadn't really acted that way in a long while.

"I don't believe you," said Harry.

She glared at him.

"Well what are we supposed to think? You're disappearing every night and won't tell us where, you're clearly on edge about something but you won't talk about it, you watch the mail for a letter that you won't explain to us – gods, one night you didn't even come home at all, and you almost missed our first class!"

"How do you know about that?"

"Ginny told me."

_What a gossipmonger_, thought Hermione. Nothing got past that girl.

"And now – now you're working on a potion that calls for an ingredient advanced enough that we've never used it in class before, and you're refusing to tell us what it is or why you're doing it!"

"I can't. Won't you just let it go?" she responded quietly.

"No. We're worried about you. Whatever it is, we can help you."

"Oh you're _worried _about me. Isn't that convenient? You want to know what I think?" she asked, though she didn't pause for an answer, "I think that you want to know what I'm doing because you're afraid it's something I shouldn't be. You don't trust me."

He at least had the compassion to look remorseful, and then she knew she'd gotten it right. The thought that he could suspect her of doing something bad, or worse, something stupid, pushed her over the divide that stood between controlled anger and irrational rage. Her blood became charged with it, replacing with crushing hurt and sadness with red-hot fury.

The fury felt so much better: heady, exhilarating. She let it overtake her.

She packed her things roughly, thrusting the cat's claw in atop the rest, and stood to leave.

"Wait," said Ron, standing. He grabbed her arm in a futile effort to stop her, but she hardly felt it, shoving him off without a thought.

"Don't! Don't touch me, don't follow me, and don't pretend to be worried about me. I'm not going to listen to it anymore. Just leave me alone."

She thought maybe that she was yelling, but she didn't care. She stalked to the door and fled the common room, all but running all the way to the seventh floor, where she greeted Barnabas the Barmy with a curt nod as she began her three passes in front of his portrait.

* * *

It was nearly two hours before Draco was able to convince himself that touching the journal wouldn't cause any more harm to come to him than he'd already incurred by taking it out of the drawer in the first place.

Significantly more harm could come of Granger finding it, he realized, and that's what made the decision for him. She would have something to say about it – she always had something to say – she would probably get all excited and enthusiastic and start testing it for curses or Dark Magic – and he just didn't think he could deal with that.

Yes, he was almost certainly considered by Voldemort to be an enemy, and then there was Ella… but he didn't want to think about how he felt about such things, certainly not yet and probably not ever. He only wanted to survive, and couldn't imagine that giving Granger the journal would improve his chances any. In fact, it would only serve to decrease the already tragically low quality of the life he'd been living, for an enthusiastic Hermione Granger was one of the most insufferable kinds.

Besides, touching the book to move it off the floor and into a hiding place didn't mean _opening_ it. He could easily just put it back in the hidden drawer, replace the desk to its original appearance, and forget about it.

And so he did – well, everything except forgetting about it. The bloody thing distracted him all through the next two chapters of Pride and Prejudice. He obsessed over it completely through _Led Zeppelin_ and _Led Zeppelin II_, then through the first again for good measure in an attempt to drown his anxiety in some loud guitar before Hermione returned.

He recalled the priceless look on her face when Penny Lane had played the previous day; She'd known, or at least suspected, that he'd put it on just to get at her, but she could never accuse him of something so ridiculous as maliciously playing music that he thought she would like. It was perfect.

_She's just too easy_ he thought gleefully as he took _Help!_ out of its sleeve and placed it on the player. He was grinning as he walked back over to his bed to set the scene for her return.

* * *

Hermione was certain that they'd know where she had gone, so she had set to packing up her potions workstation the moment she entered the Room of Requirement. She could foresee the two of them waiting with Barnabas until she was forced by hunger to come out, and she was not going to let that happen.

The problem was that they could be waiting for her just about anywhere in the castle that she could go; the library was an obvious choice and thus right out, the girls dormitory was a place they didn't have access to but didn't seem far enough away from them just now, and the Room of Requirement was already off her list.

Escape to the Tower seemed the only possible option, however the idea of running to Malfoy instead of from him seemed completely alien to her. But she had to go there regardless and the potion was for him, after all, and if she remembered correctly he was quite adept at potions. It was so appropriate that he would have a hand in brewing it that she was disappointed in herself for not having thought of it before.

Plus there was always the fact that more exposure to him meant more chances to get him to trust her.

Feeling justified, she took up her heavily leaden pack and left. Unfortunately, as soon as she'd opened the door, she heard their voices from down the hall:

"Let me see that map again?" said Harry's voice.

Hermione just couldn't catch a break. Knowing they would see that she was only a few yards away in a moment, for she had left the concealment from the Marauder's Map that the Room provided, she was faced with a choice: backward or forward?

_Forward_.

She ran to the Tower.

* * *

"Look! There she is!" said Harry, and it was only a second before he continued. "She's right around the corner - Hermione, wait! Please!"

She ignored him and picked up her speed, the adrenaline allowing her legs to pump faster than she was used to.

"Hermione!" she heard, from Ron this time, "We just want to – "

But she never heard what they "just wanted" to do. She'd stopped listening.

Harry and Ron chased after her, map in front of their faces, as quickly as they dared. Even with their speed slightly checked, they still managed to run into a few walls as they trailed the "Hermione Granger" dot through the castle.

Just as they started to gain on her – they both had been on the Quidditch team, after all – her little dot popped out of existence. She'd been right in front of the entrance to the North Tower.

But when they finally arrived at the location in question, they found only solid wall.

* * *

She kept running until she got to the very top step. Lungs burning, she flung open the door.

He was standing right in the doorway, looking alarmed and offended, watching her pant.

"Gods, Granger, you sounded like a pack of elephants coming up the stairs. What the hell is wrong with you? And, for gods' sake, stop looking at me like that."

"I'm not – ugh! This isn't about you!"

"Like hell this attitude problem you have right now isn't about me- I'm standing right here. You're in my rooms."

"Fine, ok? Let's just drop it," she replied with forced placidity, attempting to diffuse the situation before any hexes were thrown at her unarmed counterpart. That, she needed to remind herself, would be wrong.

"What, did you get less than a perfect mark on something?"

Malfoy apparently did not want to be diffused. She chose not to engage him.

"Is it your time of the month, Granger?"

Still she said nothing.

"Did Potty and the Weasel decide they don't want to be your only friends anymore?"

She tried with all her might to keep her face calm and devoid of the anguish she felt washing over her, but he must have noticed some sign that that was exactly what had happened. He suddenly looked smug.

"Well," he started, "it's about time – "

"SHUT UP!" Hermione screamed back at him, "can we please move beyond the bickering for today? I came here to get away from it."

In anger she'd revealed too much, and she knew it. To counter her grievous error, she decided to try to catch him off-guard by going on the offensive.

"And my period, Malfoy? Really? Couldn't you think of anything a little more original than that?"

And though the retort wasn't particularly shocking or particularly clever, it was her first. Thus, the powerful, invigorated feeling that flooded her was an absolute shock to her system, like life being pumped back into her, slowly making its way from her heart to her fingertips. The confused look on his face didn't hurt, either.

* * *

Draco was stunned. Who'd have thought the Granger girl would make a comeback? But this was all wrong; he was supposed to be trying to be nice to her, befriending her even (as nauseating as that might seem), but he'd had difficulty helping himself when he'd seen her, all flustered and out of breath…

Come to think of it, he couldn't really help it now either.

"Classics never die, Granger. I mean really, what do muggle parents teach their children?" he asked with a sneer.

"What a cop-out. '_Classics never die_'? Sounds like an inbred pureblood's excuse for lack of cleverness and originality to me."

Damn it if she wasn't really good at this! Draco couldn't remember the last time someone challenged him at all, let alone with the skill she seemed to have been hiding.

"Well I wouldn't want to overwhelm your brain capacity with my cleverness in full force," he replied, unable to let her have the last word, "so maybe we should try to get on with your business here so you can leave me alone."

And he really did need to move on from the bickering. Granger had developed a kind of spark to her eyes and a liveliness in her expression that, frankly, frightened him. Inexplicably mopey and resigned Granger, he could handle. Invigorated Granger? He wasn't sure there was any way to prepare for that.

She met his eye challengingly for a moment before she resigned from the duel with an inaudible sigh. She probably knew exactly what he was doing, too, and he wished for just a fraction of a second that she wouldn't give up the last word so easily.

She cleared her throat to break their staring contest and said brightly, "Alright, well today I was able to secure the last ingredient for your potion."

And then she started to rummage through her bag, giving him a moment to let the despair at his imminent death seep through before he got it back under control. He watched her take a vial out of the bag and place it proudly on his desk.

"That's… err… good, I guess," he replied lamely. He had no control over it anyway. What difference could it make to him?

"And," she started a bit nervously when it was clear that she wasn't going to get any more enthusiasm from him than that, "I have a bit of a proposition for you."

He smirked, all desire to stop the bickering behind him. An opening like that was impossible to resist. "Ahh here we go. I know that you can't help but be attracted to me, but honestly, Granger, I thought you'd be able to maintain control over yourself for a little longer…"

He watched through his delivery as something came over her, like she was throwing away all propriety or caution to beat him at his own game once and for all. As a gambling man, he might say she was going "all in."

She raised a single eyebrow, haughty expression plastered across her face, and stalked up to him like she was about to ravage or devour him. Or both. She grasped his shoulder firmly to keep him in place while she whispered in his ear:

"If only you could be so lucky."

Draco was momentarily speechless, able only to wonder what the hell had gotten into her. Worse, he was slightly, _very _embarrassingly, aroused. For the last, he damned his forced celibacy to every level of hell.

"Now," she started, back to normal and standing an acceptable distance from him as if no lapse in her sanity had ever occurred, "I was about to propose that you might help brew this potion. It's… well, it's quite complicated, and I don't have a good place to keep it, and it's not that easy to keep finding time to brew in the middle of the day, and – "

"Gods, Granger, I'd help if only to stop your incessant rambling. Anyway, you and I both know I've always been better at potions than you," he answered dismissively.

Her reaction was satisfyingly immediate. He just couldn't get used to how easily manipulated she was.

"That is utterly ridiculous! I swear – "

"Calm down, Granger. No need to get your panties all in a bunch. Suffice it to say that I'm willing to help."

"Fine," she said through gritted teeth, letting him win for the second time that night. "Let's get started."


End file.
